The Child Wife

by Mayne Reid

Time was—and that not “long, long ago”—when the arrival of a European steamer at New York was an event, as was also the departure. There were only “Cunarders” that came and went once a fortnight; at a later period making the trip hebdomadally.

Any one who has crossed the Atlantic by the Cunard steamers need not be told that, in New York, their point of landing and leaving is upon the Jersey shore.

In the days when such things were “sensations,” a crowd used to collect at the Cunard wharf, attracted thither by the presence of the vast leviathan.

Now and then were occasions when the motive was different or rather the attraction—when, instead of the steamer, it was some distinguished individual aboard of her: prince, patriot, singer, or courtesan. Gay, unreflecting Gotham stays not to make distinction, honouring all kinds of notoriety alike; or at all events giving them an equal distribution of its curiosity.

One of these occasions was peculiar. It was a departure; the boat being the Cambria, one of the slowest, at the same time most comfortable, steamers on the “line.”

She has been long since withdrawn from it; her keel, if I mistake not, now ploughing the more tranquil waters of the Indian Ocean.

And her captain, the brave, amiable Shannon! He, too, has been transferred to another service, where the cares of steam navigation and the storms of the Atlantic shall vex him no more.

He is not forgotten. Reading these words, many hearts will be stirred up to remember him—true hearts—still beating in New York, still holding in record that crowd on the Jersey shore alongside the departing steamer.

Though assembled upon American soil, but few of the individuals composing it were American. The physiognomy was European, chiefly of the Teutonic type, though with an intermingling of the Latinic. Alongside the North German, with light-coloured skin and huge tawny moustache, stood his darker cousin of the Danube; and beside both the still swarthier son of Italy, with gleaming dark eyes, and thick chevelure of shining black. Here could be noted, too, a large admixture of Frenchmen, some of them still wearing the blouse brought over from their native land; most of them of that brave ouvrier class, who but the year before, and two years after, might have been seen resolutely defending the barricades of Paris.

Only here and there could be distinguished an American face, or a word spoken in the English language—the speaker being only a spectator who had chanced upon the spot.