“They have letters to Mr. A***, to Mr. and Mrs. ***, and to many of our first people.”
Here the lady whispered something to the gentleman, which, as far as I could understand, sounded like this: “We shall see them at Mrs. A***’s, and you must try to get introduced to them; it will be just the thing for us if we should ever go to England.” (Aloud to the captain,) “Have you brought some more English people?”
“Lots of them,” replied the captain; “Mr. *** and Mr. *** of Manchester, Mr. *** of Liverpool, Mr. *** and Mr. *** of London,—all in the cotton business.”
“We don’t want to know them,” said the lady; “business people, I presume,—full of pretensions and vulgar English prejudices. Have you brought no other genteel persons besides Lady *** and Captain ***?”
“Oh, yes,” replied the sailor, who began to be tired of the interrogatory; “a young sprig of nobility, Lord ***, as they call him.”
“I am so sorry,” said the lady with a bewitching smile, “to trouble you so much, captain; but really I should be so much obliged to you if you were to show me the young lord.”
“It’s that chap for’ard,” said the captain, “talking to the engineer.”
“Then I presume he is a Whig lord,” remarked the lady.
“I don’t care a d—n,” muttered the captain as he was going away, “whether he be Whig, Tory, or Radical, so he pays his passage, and behaves himself like a gentleman.”
Our deck was now covered with more than a hundred and fifty people, principally English and Irish, among whom there was a great number of women and children. Those that had come over in the steerage confined themselves for a short time to the forward deck; but after they had paid their fare, and ascertained that they were charged as much as those who occupied the chairs and settees that were placed aft the wheels, they gradually came one by one to partake of the same privilege, and, though not without hesitation, took their seats among the better dressed part of the company. This was the signal for a general move; the ladies forming themselves into little sets by themselves, with a portion of the gentlemen standing by their side, and the unencumbered part of the latter walking the opposite side of the deck. But the young progeny of England and Ireland, emboldened by their success, disturbed them a second time by walking the deck in the opposite direction; and one of them, a swaggering youth of about nineteen, actually had the impudence of addressing a gentleman who had been a cabin passenger on board of the packet.