On the next morning Mr. Force took his family to Central Park and to the menagerie.
In the evening he took them to the opera to hear Kellogg. That was their last night in the city.
CHAPTER XXIX
“ONCE MORE UPON THE WATERS”
Saturday, the twenty-eighth of May, was a very fine day. As early as seven in the morning the hacks engaged to take our travelers to the steamer were standing before the ladies’ entrance of the Metropolitan Hotel.
Their luggage had been sent aboard ship on the day before.
A little after seven the whole party came down and entered the carriages, and were driven off toward the pier where the Persia lay.
They arrived amid the bustle and confusion that always attends the sailing of an ocean steamer—crowds of carriages and drags of all sorts; crowds of men, women and children of all sorts; crowds of passengers going on; crowds of friends seeing them off; here and there a heartrending parting; a bedlam of sights; a babel of sounds, deafening noises, suffocating scents.
Such was the scene on the pier and such was the scene on the deck when Mr. Force had succeeded in navigating his party from the first to the last.
“For Heaven’s sake keep close together! Are we all here?” he anxiously inquired.
“All!” answered a score of voices.