The hospital cart arrived. Busy agents lifted into it, with professional sang froid, crippled age and tottering childhood. But all the spectators of this harrowing scene testified, by their expressions, sympathy and sorrow, one low-browed ruffian alone excepted.
"Serves 'em right d—— n—— 'em!" said he, savagely. "Why don't they stay at home in their own country, and not come here to take the bread out of honest people's mouths?"
Honest, quotha? If ever "flat burglary" and "treason dire" were written on a man's face, it stood out in staring capitals upon that Cain-like brow.
But there were lights as well as shadows to the picture. Out of that grim den of death, out of that floating lazar house, there came a few blooming maidens and stalwart youths, like fair flowers springing from the rankness of a charnel. Their sorrows were but for the misfortunes of others; and even these were a while forgotten in the joy of meeting near and dear relatives, and old friends upon the shore of the promised land. They went their way rejoicing, and with them passed the solitary ray of sunshine that streamed athwart the dark horrors of the emigrant ship, like the wandering pencil of light that sometimes visits the condemned cell of a prison.
THE LAST OF THE STAGE COACHES.
A FRAGMENT OF A CLUB-ROOM CONVERSATION.
"Did you ever," said the one-eyed gentleman, fixing his single sound optic upon us with an intensity which made it glow like one of the coals in the grate before us, "did you ever hear how I met with this misfortune?"
"What misfortune, sir?"