THE EUROPE CONTINUED.—CHANGE OF AFFAIRS.
"Life's like a ship in constant motion:
Sometimes smooth, and sometimes rough."—Song.
"Oh! the pleasures of a summer trip across the Atlantic!" Thus sung and chorused my good friends one and all; some from experience, most from hearsay, but ever in unison.
"You'll have quite a party of pleasure," says one. "The only thing to be dreaded will be the ennui arising out of long calms, gentle breezes, eternal sunshine by day and moonlight by night," says another.
One would have fancied, according to their account, that sun and moon alternated like buckets in a well, one up, the other down, with the exception that both were to be always at full.
So constant, however, were these remarks about heat, and sun, and summer air, that I packed up every article of clothing heavier than duck or cachmere; nay, had not some worthy matter-of-fact soul let slip a stray hint about ice and sleighing parties in December, I verily believe, hating as I do all superfluous baggage, I should have left my greatcoats to the moth and fog of Old England.
But whew! from such airs the Lord preserve me!—whilst at the tail of our honest, grimy, grumbling steamer, cutting through the Mersey or along the coast of Wales, we were, I admit, tolerably sunned and warm enough, though not even here bedazzled or over-heated; but on the second morning out, what a change!