miscellaneous accidental group. For some time our days went by in
reading aloud, working, chess, draughts and conversation, with two
hours at quoits in the afternoon for exercise; but four days ago the
only son of Mrs. Dexter, who is the only lady on board besides
myself, ruptured a blood vessel on the lungs, and lies in a most
critical state in the deck-house from which he has not been moved,
requiring most careful nursing, incessant fanning, and the attention
of two persons by day and night. Mrs. D. had previously won the
regard of everyone, and I had learned to look on her as a friend
from whom I should be grieved to part. The only hope for the young
man's life is that he should be landed at Honolulu, and she has
urged me so strongly to land with her there, where she will be a
complete stranger, that I have consented to do so, and consequently
shall see the Sandwich Islands. This severe illness has cast a
great gloom over our circle of six, and Mr. D. continues in a state
of so much exhaustion and peril that all our arrangements as to
occupation, recreation, and sleep, are made with reference to a
sick, and as we sometimes fear, a dying man, whose state is much
aggravated by the maltreatment and stupidity of a dilapidated Scotch
doctor, who must be at least eighty, and whose intellects are
obfuscated by years of whiskey drinking. Two of the gentlemen not
only show the utmost tenderness as nurses, but possess a skill and
experience which are invaluable. They never leave him by night, and
scarcely take needed rest even in the day, one or other of them
being always at hand to support him when faint, or raise him on his
pillows.

It is not only that the Nevada is barely seaworthy, and has kept us
broiling in the tropics when we ought to have been at San Francisco,
but her fittings are so old. The mattresses bulge and burst, and