It was very weary on ship board. Julien and Victor had spied out all there was to be seen the first week they set sail, and the sailors had told them all the stories they could possibly think of. Mrs. Adrian (their mother) was too sick to leave the cabin, and the little boys were getting very impatient to reach shore.
How would America look? What sort of houses did they have there? What sort of children? Would they be good play-fellows? These were the things little Julien and Victor were thinking about.
Their father was thinking of the price of provisions, and about house rent, and the probabilities of his finding customers for his tailoring work; and whether they should all have to live in the shop, and whether his sickly wife would thrive under the changeable climate, and whether they should make a home, or always be like "strangers in a strange land."
And their mother; she was thinking of the gray-haired old father who had blessed her for the last time, and of the sunny homes of England, with their wealth of shrub and tree and blossom, and of a dear little girl whom she left sleeping in a quiet church-yard, between whom and herself the swift blue waves were building up a wall of separation.
Land ho! shouted the old tars.
Land ho! echoed the merry little boys.
And this was America! this New-York! How very odd and strange everything was! How anxious the people all looked! How slender!—how pale!—and what a hurry they all seemed to be in! How they jostled about, as if they were afraid they shouldn't get their share of terra-firma! How the cab-men and porters and hack-drivers were just as independent as the gentlemen and ladies they worked for! and how showily and gaily the ladies dressed, just to take a promenade.
It was all very funny.
The children and their mother looked with all their eyes; they could not make up their minds whether they should like it or not; but that was not the first thing to be considered; they must first decide where to live.