O woman!  I have seen you in the brilliant whirl of society, where all was gayety, gallantry, and splendor.  I have seen your eyes flash triumphant, and daintily gaitered feet move fast and furious to the music of les pieces d’or.  I have seen brave men stand fascinated at your side, and careless youth overflow the bumper of Johannisberger to health, and youth, and beauty.  I have heard the stern cynic jingle his Napoleons in unison with the frantic strains, and sneer out, “Vive la bagatelle!” Daughters of marble! daughters of marble!  Turn your snowy arms to the glittering gorgeous, scatter the golden heaps, deluge the world with champagne.  Diamonds, diamonds must win hearts.  I have watched you in a deeper, darker, madder whirl, while I have seen fair, blooming flowers wither in the hot hands of drunken licentiousness.  Oh, Becky Sharp!  Oh, Dame aux Camellias! you are but single dandelions in a parterre of heliotropes!

* * * * *

There was hurrying to and fro on the broad decks.  Bustling cabin-boys rushed hither and thither with great baskets of stores; the jauntily-arrayed stewardess chatted saucily with her friends in the shore-boats; sailors slipped quietly over the bulwarks with their secretly-collected menageries of pets; watermen contended stoutly at the gangway for a landing near the steps; and dusky cameradas cursed, in broken French and Portuguese, at the weight of the trunks.  Here a naturalist trembled with anxiety for the fate of a coral; there a bird-fancier worked himself into a small frenzy at the jostling of big parrots.  Bones, fossils, plants, bottled fish, bananas, oranges, and mangoes, were mingled in one promiscuous heap.  Monkeys of all tribes and shades of complexion, from the golden Mumasitte to the fierce Machaca, were crowded pell-mell into passages; and forcing them against the bulkheads were boxes of wine, jellies, and doces in their infinitesimal variety.  Men and women, crouching in retired places, hurried through their few broken words of parting, and eyes were dried for the great heart-throb left for the very last.  Off in the painted boats, ship-chandlers smilingly bowed their bon voyage, and faces pallid with grief gazed with swollen eyes at loved ones convulsed with emotion.  The gorgeous custom-house officer has smoked his last cigarette and taken his last “dispatch;” the belated passenger, whose agonizing shrieks and spasmodic contortions finally attracted the attention of the captain, is at length, carpet-bag in hand, on board, and the sharp crash of the gong severs the lingering groups.

Who ever made an ocean voyage undismayed by the knell!  It is the trumpet-tongue of reality, awakening the mind from the lethargy of its distress.  The woe of separation, the terror of the journey, the vague apprehension of the future, meeting, burst upon you in the fullness of their stern reality.  The bewildered mortal turns to gaze at the companions of his danger, casts a lingering look on those he has left behind; the groaning paddles, with reluctant plunges, begin their weary labor; the faces of the cheering crowd, one by one, drop out of the picture, until distance swallows the whole, and those nearer and dearer than all earth beside become a memory.