The next morning, at five o’clock, the Norumbia came to anchor in the pretty harbor of Plymouth.  In the cool early light the town lay distinct along the shore, quaint with its small English houses, and stately with come public edifices of unknown function on the uplands; a country-seat of aristocratic aspect showed itself on one of the heights; on another the tower of a country church peered over the tree-tops; there were lines of fortifications, as peaceful, at their distance, as the stone walls dividing the green fields.  The very iron-clads in the harbor close at hand contributed to the amiable gayety of the scene under the pale blue English sky, already broken with clouds from which the flush of the sunrise had not quite faded.  The breath of the land came freshly out over the water; one could almost smell the grass and the leaves.  Gulls wheeled and darted over the crisp water; the tones of the English voices on the tender were pleasant to the ear, as it fussed and scuffled to the ship’s side.  A few score of the passengers left her; with their baggage they formed picturesque groups on the tender’s deck, and they set out for the shore waving their hands and their handkerchiefs to the friends they left clustering along the rail of the Norumbia.  Mr. and Mrs. Leffers bade March farewell, in the final fondness inspired by his having coffee with them before they left the ship; they said they hated to leave.

The stop had roused everybody, and the breakfast tables were promptly filled, except such as the passengers landing at Plymouth had vacated; these were stripped of their cloths, and the remaining commensals placed at others.  The seats of the Lefferses were given to March’s old Ohio friend and his wife.  He tried to engage them in the tally which began to be general in the excitement of having touched land; but they shyly held aloof.

Some English newspapers had come aboard from the tug, and there was the usual good-natured adjustment of the American self-satisfaction, among those who had seen them, to the ever-surprising fact that our continent is apparently of no interest to Europe.  There were some meagre New York stock-market quotations in the papers; a paragraph in fine print announced the lynching of a negro in Alabama; another recorded a coal-mining strike in Pennsylvania.

“I always have to get used to it over again,” said Kenby.  “This is the twentieth time I have been across, and I’m just as much astonished as I was the first, to find out that they don’t want to know anything about us here.”

“Oh,” said March, “curiosity and the weather both come from the west.  San Francisco wants to know about Denver, Denver about Chicago, Chicago about New York, and New York about London; but curiosity never travels the other way any more than a hot wave or a cold wave.”

“Ah, but London doesn’t care a rap about Vienna,” said Kenby.

“Well, some pressures give out before they reach the coast, on our own side.  It isn’t an infallible analogy.”