It is our last night on board; to-morrow we are to separate. Many of us on this voyage have met for the first time, and in all human probability few of us will again come side by side. There is always a feeling of sadness in thinking you do something for the last time. I can fancy even a convict leaving his cell where he has passed some years pausing upon the threshold while a rush of the old recollections, the long, sad hours cheered by gleams of hope, crowd upon him, when he will feel some strange sentiment of regret that it is the last time he looks upon the place. The feeling may last but a second, but it is an impulse of our nature which is uncontrollable.
On board ship, with a certainty of gaining port to-morrow, the last hours are passed in packing up and preparing to leave, and a feeling of regret creeps in that now so many pleasant associations are to end, and in spite of yourself some of the good qualities of those who are set down as disagreeable people come to the surface in your memory. Some few friendships are formed at sea which are perpetuated, but generally the pleasantest of our relations terminate with the voyage. It is too often the case, as in the voyage of life, that those we have learned to esteem are seen no more.
We had to lose no time in order to pass the troublesome bar at the mouth of Liverpool harbour. With vessels of the draught of the American steamers it can only be crossed at high water. The officers generally calculate what can be done from the hour they leave Moville, and regulate their speed accordingly, so as to approach it at the right moment.
No one knows better than the occupants of the cabin corresponding with our own on the opposite side of the vessel that a great many tons of ashes have been thrown overboard during the voyage: we all know that a large volume of smoke has passed out of the funnel, a proof of the great weight of fuel which has been expended in keeping the screw revolving. The draught of the ship is consequently considerably less than when we left the St. Lawrence.
There is now no fog; the weather is fine; there is everything to encourage the attempt to run in, and it proves successful. On this occasion, had we been twenty minutes later, we should have had to remain outside until another tide. The lights of Galloway and the Isle of Man were passed before the most of us retired last night. We all awoke early; at a quarter to five we had crossed the bar; the “Parisian” was in the Mersey; the tender came alongside the ship, and very soon afterwards I stood again on English ground.
CHAPTER III.
ENGLAND.
Willie Gordon—Custom House Annoyances—Cable Telegram—Post Office Annoyances—London—Spurgeon’s Tabernacle—An Ancestral Home—English and United States Hotels—English Reserve—A Railway Accident—The Land’s End—A Deaf Guest.
As I stood on the landing stage at Liverpool awaiting patiently and with resignation for the Customs officers to allow the removal of our luggage, a host of recollections ran through my mind. My thoughts went back twenty years to another occasion when I landed from an ocean steamer at an hour equally early. My memory has been aided by one of those works which appear so frequently from the New York press, so fertile in this species of encyclopædiac literature, endeavouring to embrace in a few pages the truths learned only by a life’s experience. The small volume tells you what not to do, and it sententiously sets forth its philosophy in a series of paragraphs. There are ninety-five pages of this philanthropic effort, with about four hundred negative injunctions. The title of the book is “Don’t.” The injunction that struck my eye most forcibly may be taken as no bad type of the teaching of the book. It runs, “Don’t” is the first word of every sentence. “Don’t go with your boots unpolished, but don’t have the polishing done in the public highways.” These words met my eye as I was engaged in these pages, and they brought back the feelings which passed through my mind on the morning I left the “Parisian.”