By stopping here we had the misfortune to lose our excursion, a loss that was soothed by no know ledge of its destination or hope of seeing it again, and a loss without a hope is nearly always painful.  Going out of the harbor we encounter Pictou Island and Light, and presently see the low coast of Prince Edward Island,—­a coast indented and agreeable to those idly sailing along it, in weather that seemed let down out of heaven and over a sea that sparkled but still slept in a summer quiet.  When fate puts a man in such a position and relieves him of all responsibility, with a book and a good comrade, and liberty to make sarcastic remarks upon his fellow-travelers, or to doze, or to look over the tranquil sea, he may be pronounced happy.  And I believe that my companion, except in the matter of the comrade, was happy.  But I could not resist a worrying anxiety about the future of the British Provinces, which not even the remembrance of their hostility to us during our mortal strife with the Rebellion could render agreeable.  For I could not but feel that the ostentatious and unconcealable prosperity of “the States” over-shadows this part of the continent.  And it was for once in vain that I said, “Have we not a common land and a common literature, and no copyright, and a common pride in Shakespeare and Hannah More and Colonel Newcome and Pepys’s Diary?” I never knew this sort of consolation to fail before; it does not seem to answer in the Provinces as well as it does in England.

New passengers had come on board at Pictou, new and hungry, and not all could get seats for dinner at the first table.  Notwithstanding the supposed traditionary advantage of our birthplace, we were unable to dispatch this meal with the celerity of our fellow-voyagers, and consequently, while we lingered over our tea, we found ourselves at the second table.  And we were rewarded by one of those pleasing sights that go to make up the entertainment of travel.  There sat down opposite to us a fat man whose noble proportions occupied at the board the space of three ordinary men.  His great face beamed delight the moment he came near the table.  He had a low forehead and a wide mouth and small eyes, and an internal capacity that was a prophecy of famine to his fellow-men.  But a more good-natured, pleased animal you may never see.  Seating himself with unrepressed joy, he looked at us, and a great smile of satisfaction came over his face, that plainly said, “Now my time has come.”  Every part of his vast bulk said this.  Most generously, by his friendly glances, he made us partners in his pleasure.  With a Napoleonic grasp of his situation, he reached far and near, hauling this and that dish of fragments towards his plate, giving orders at the same time, and throwing into his cheerful mouth odd pieces of bread and pickles in an unstudied and preliminary manner.  When he had secured everything within his reach, he heaped his plate and began an attack upon the contents, using