The happy pair went home in their carriage, and we never heard of any differences between them. Mrs. Cleveland wears very well, and Mr. Cleveland is now an alderman, remarkable chiefly for the ponderosity of his person, and the heaviness of his municipal harangues. "Sich is life."
THE EMIGRANT SHIP.
On a summer's day, some years ago, business brought me to one of the wharves of this city, at the moment when a ship from Liverpool had just arrived, with some two hundred and fifty emigrants, men, women, and children, chiefly Irish. Much as I had heard and read of the condition of many of the poor passengers, I never fully realized their distresses until I personally witnessed them.
Under the most favorable circumstances, the removal of families from the land of their birth is attended by many painful incidents. About to embark upon a long and perilous voyage, to seek the untried hospitalities of a stranger soil, the old landmarks and associations which the heartstrings grasp with a cruel tenacity are viewed through the mist of tears and agony.
The old church—the weather-worn homestead—the ancient school house, the familiar play ground, and more sadly dear than all, the green graveyard, offer a mute appeal "more eloquent than words." But when to these afflictions of the heart are added the pangs of physical suffering and privation; when emigrants, in embarking, embark their all in the expenses of the voyage, and have no hope, even for existence, but in a happy combination of possible chances; when near and dear ones must be left behind, certainly to suffer, and probably to die,—the pangs of separation embrace all that can be conceived of agony and distress.
The emigrant ship whose arrival we witnessed had been seventy odd days from port to port. Her passengers were of the poorest class. Their means had been nearly exhausted in going from Dublin to Liverpool, and in endeavors to obtain work in the latter city, previous to bidding a reluctant but eternal farewell to the old country. They came on board worn out—wan—the very life of many dependent on a speedy passage over the Atlantic. In this they were disappointed. The ship had encountered a succession of terrific gales; it had leaked badly, and they had been confined, a great part of the voyage, to their narrow quarters between decks, herded together in a noisome and pestilential atmosphere, littered with damp straw, and full of filth.
What marvel that disease and death invaded their ranks? One after another, many died and were launched into the deep sea. The ship entered Fayal to refit, and there that clime of endless summer proved to the emigrants more fatal than the blast of the upas-poisoned valley of Java. The delicious oranges, and the mild Pico wine, used liberally by the passengers, sowed the seeds of death yet more freely among their ranks. On the passage from Fayal, the mortality was dreadful, but at length, decimated and diseased, the band of emigrants arrived at Boston.
It was a summer's day—but no cheering ray of light fell upon the spires of the city. The sky was dark and gloomy; the bay spread out before the eye like a huge sheet of lead, and the clouds swept low and heavily over the hills and house tops.