I had formed my plans; so, telling the captain that I might perhaps want to go back with him, I hurried into the town.  A steamboat lay by the wharf-boat.  “The Bostona, for Cincinnati,” said the board displayed over her upper railing.  She was to leave at eight o’clock.  I walked about the town till half-past seven; then, returning to the coal-boats, gave to the man left in charge a letter I had prepared, in which I told my step-mother, in as few words as possible, that I wanted to see something of the world, and had determined to go for a time either to Cincinnati or to Pittsburg,—­that I begged her not to be uneasy about me, I had sold my watch, and had money enough for the present; she should hear from me in due time.  The man took the letter, with some remark on my not returning with them, and, with a quiet good-day, I left him and walked rapidly toward the steamer.  The plank was laid from the wharf-boat, and, without daring to hesitate, I walked over it.

It was done.  I was fairly separated from everything I had ever known before; everything now was new to me; I was ignorant of all around me; each step might be a mistake.  I felt this, when a porter, stepping forward and taking my bundle, asked me if I would have a state-room.  What was a state-room?  I did not know, but saying, “Yes,” with a desperate feeling that it might as well be “yes” as “no,” I was led back to the ladies’ cabin, a key was turned in one of an infinite number of little doors, and I was ushered into what looked to me like a closet, with shelves made to take the place of beds.  Here at least I was alone, and here I could be alone till dinner-time; till then there was no call for action on my part.

And how precious seemed to me every hour of rest!  Singularly enough, my great sorrow did not come back to me in those pauses of action.  I seemed then to be entirely absorbed in gathering strength for the next occasion; my grief was put away for the future, when there would come to me the time to indulge it.

So I lay quiet during that morning, looking sometimes through my little window at the passing shore, listening sometimes to the loud talking in the cabin, sometimes to the noises on the boat, wondering if all those strange creakings and shakings could be right, but finding a sense of security in my very ignorance.  Dinner came, and in the course of it I found courage to ask the captain, at whose right hand I was placed, what time we should reach Cincinnati.  “Not till after breakfast,” was his welcome answer; for I had been haunted by a dread of being set adrift in a great city in the middle of the night, when I might perhaps fall into some den of thieves.  I had read of such things in my books.  This gave me still the afternoon before it would be necessary to think, some hours more in which to rest mind and body.