"I tell you what it is," said Picton, "you are getting personal."
We were now rolling past the dingy tenements again. Squalid-looking, care-worn women, grimy children:
"To me there's something touching, I confess,
In the grave look of early thoughtfulness,
Seen often in some little childish face,
Among the poor;"—
But these children's faces are not such. A child's face—God bless it! should always have a little sunshine in its glance; but these are mere staring faces, without expression, that make you shudder and feel sad. Miners by birth; human moles fitted to burrow in darkness for a life-time. Is it worth living for? No wonder those swart laborers underground are so grim and taciturn: no wonder there was not a face lighted up by those smoky lamps in the pit, that had one line of human sympathy left in its rigidly engraved features!
But we must have coal, and we must have cotton. The whole plantations of the South barely supply the press with paper; and the messenger of intelligence, the steam-ship, but for coal could not perform its glorious mission. What is to be done, Picton? If every man is willing to give up his morning paper, wear a linen shirt, cross the ocean in a clipper-ship, and burn wood in an open fire-place, something might be done.
As Picton's steamer (probably fog-bound) had not yet arrived in Sydney, nor yet indeed the "Balaklava," the traveller determined to take a Newfoundland brigantine for St. John's, from which port there are vessels to all parts of the world. After leaving horse and jumper with the inn-keeper, we took a small boat to one of the many queer looking, high-pooped crafts in the harbor, and very soon found ourselves in a tiny cabin, panelled with maple, in which the captain and some of the men were busy over a pan of savory lobscouse, a salt-sea dish of great reputation and flavor. Picton soon made his agreement with the captain for a four days' sail (or more) across to the neighboring province, and his luggage was to be on board the next morning. Once more we sailed over the bay of Sydney, and regained the pleasant shelter of our inn.
"Picton," said I, after a comfortable supper and a pensive segar, "we shall soon separate for our respective homes; but before we part, I wish to say to you how much I have enjoyed this brief acquaintance; perhaps we may never meet again, but I trust our short voyage together, will now and then be recalled by you, in whatever part of the world you may chance to be, as it certainly will by me."
The traveller replied by a hearty, earnest grasp of the hand; and then, after this formal leave-taking, we became suddenly estranged, as it were, sad, and silent, and shy; the familiar tone of conversation lost its key-note; Picton looked out of the inn window at the luminous moon-fog on the bay, and I buried my reflections in an antiquated pamphlet of "Household Words." We were soon interrupted by a stranger coming into the parlor, a chance visitor, another dry, preceese specimen of the land of oat-cakes.
After the usual salutations, the conversation floated easily on, upon indifferent topics, until Picton happened to allude, casually, to the general banking system of England. This was enough for a text. Our visitor immediately launched forth upon the subject, and gaed us a twa-hours discourse on the system of banking in Scotland; wherein the superiority of the method adopted by his countrymen, to wring the last drop of interest out a shilling, was pertinaciously and dogmatically argued, upon the great groundwork of "the general and aibstract preencepels of feenance!"
It was in vain that the traveller endeavored to silence him by a few flashes of sarcasm. He might as well have tried to silence a park of artillery with a handful of torpedoes! On and on, with the doggedness of a slow-hound, the Scot pursued the theme, until all other considerations were lost in the one sole idea.