Please ma, have pa send me a draft at my address at London, at once. I find the expense of travel is much greater than I supposed, and I fear I shall not have enough.
Your affectionate son,
Lemuel.
“There,” said Lemuel, as he sealed the letter, “that is what I call a good letter. The old lady will read it over and over to herself, and then she will read it to all the neighbors. It will do her a heap of good. Bye-bye. The boys are waiting for me in the smoking-room.”
And stopping at the bar to take a drink—the liberality of English measure was not too great for him—he was, a minute after, absorbed in the mysteries of poker, and was “raking-in” the money of the others at a lively rate.
And the letter went to the good old mother, and probably did her good. And she, doubtless, worried the old gentleman till he sent the graceless fellow a remittance. Boys can always be sure of their mothers—would that mothers could only be half as sure of their boys.
THE STORM.
The fourth night out we were favored with a most terrific thunder storm. I say favored, now that we are through with it, for it is a good thing to look back upon, but we esteemed it no favor at the time. A fierce storm is bad enough on land—it is a terror on water. On the land you are threatened with danger only from above—on the water you are doubly menaced. There was the marshaling of the clouds that were arranging themselves for an attack upon us, then the terrible darkness, then the first onslaught of the winds, that tossed the strong ship like a cork, then the thunder that seemed like the voice of a merciless Vengeance, and the lightnings that were its fiery fingers; pitchy darkness, except when the lightning illuminated the scene, and the sight it disclosed made darkness preferable, for it showed the great waves rolling one after another, their white crests like the teeth of enormous dragons, strong enough to crush the mass of iron against which their fury was directed. And then the wind howling through the rigging was fearfully like the shrieks of the monsters baffled and robbed of their prey. It seemed as though the entire forces of Nature were arrayed intelligently against our ship, and for the sole purpose of its destruction.
