For, as for betraying the confidences of those sad days, as for telling how wofully untrue Professors of Temperance were to their principles, how the Apostle of Total Abstinence developed a brandy-flask, not altogether new, what unsuccessful tipplings were attempted in the desperation of nausea, and for what lady that stunning brandy-smasher was mixed,—­as for such tales out of school, I would have you know that I am not the man to tell them.

Yet a portrait or so lingers in my mental repository;—­let me throw them in, to close off the lot.

No. 1.  A sober Bostonian in the next state-room, whose assiduity with his sea-sick wife reminds one of Cock-Robin, when he sent Jenny Wren sops and wine.  This person was last seen in a dressing-gown, square-cut night-cap, and odd slippers, dancing up and down the state-room floor with a cup of gruel, making wild passes with a spoon at an individual in a berth, who never got any of the contents.  Item, the gruel, in a moment of excitement, finally ran in a stream upon the floor, and was wiped up by the steward.  Result not known, but disappointment is presumable.

No. 2.  A stout lady, imprisoned by a board on a sofa nine inches wide, called by a facetious friend “The Coffin.”  She complains that her sides are tolerably battered in;—­we hold our tongues, and think that the board, too, has had a hard time of it.  Yet she is a jolly soul, laughing at her misfortunes, and chirruping to her baby.  Her spirits keep up, even when her dinner won’t keep down.  Her favorite expressions are “Good George!” and “Oh, jolly!” She does not intend, she says, to lay in any dry goods in Cuba, but means to eat up all the good victuals she comes across.  Though seen at present under unfavorable circumstances, she inspires confidence as to her final accomplishment of this result.

No. 3.  A woman, said to be of a literary turn of mind, in the miserablest condition imaginable.  Her clothes, flung at her by the stewardess, seem to have hit in some places, and missed in others.  Her listless hands occasionally make an attempt to keep her draperies together, and to pull her hat on her head; but though the intention is evident, she accomplishes little by her motion.  She is perpetually being lugged about by a stout steward, who knocks her head against both sides of the vessel, folds her up in the gangway, spreads her out on the deck, and takes her up-stairs, down-stairs, and in my lady’s chamber, where, report says, he feeds her with a spoon, and comforts her with such philosophy as he is master of.  N.B.  This woman, upon the first change of weather, rose like a cork, dressed like a Christian, and toddled about the deck in the easiest manner, sipping her grog, and cutting sly jokes upon her late companions in misery,—­is supposed by some to have been an impostor, and, when ill-treated, announced intentions of writing a book.