while, on all sides, there are responses of bell and gong; and the
vessels at anchor look shadow-like as we glide past them, and the master
of one steamer shouts a warning to the master of another which he meets.
The Englishmen, who hate to run any risk without an equivalent object,
show a good deal of caution and timidity on these foggy days.

December 13th.--Chill, frosty weather; such an atmosphere as forebodes
snow in New England, and there has been a little here. Yet I saw a
barefooted young woman yesterday. The feet of these poor creatures have
exactly the red complexion of their hands, acquired by constant exposure
to the cold air.

At the ferry-room, this morning, was a small, thin, anxious-looking
woman, with a bundle, seeming in rather poor circumstances, but decently
dressed, and eying other women, I thought, with an expression of slight
ill-will and distrust; also, an elderly, stout, gray-haired woman, of
respectable aspect, and two young lady-like persons, quite pretty, one of
whom was reading a shilling volume of James's "Arabella Stuart." They
talked to one another with that up-and-down intonation which English
ladies practise, and which strikes an unaccustomed ear as rather
affected, especially in women of size and mass. It is very different
from an American lady's mode of talking: there is the difference between
color and no color; the tone variegates it. One of these young ladies
spoke to me, making some remark about the weather,--the first instance I
have met with of a gentlewoman's speaking to an unintroduced gentleman.
Besides these, a middle-aged man of the lower class, and also a
gentleman's out-door servant, clad in a drab great-coat, corduroy
breeches, and drab cloth gaiters buttoned from the knee to the ankle. He
complained to the other man of the cold weather; said that a glass of
whiskey, every half-hour, would keep a man comfortable; and, accidentally