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IRISH PRACTICAL BLUNDERS.

but was often entrusted with letters and parcels to be taken from one part of the town to another. One day, having been sent by somebody with a quantity of sprats, he unluckily forgot the address of the party who was to receive them; and as he had often seen numberless small packets put into the receiving-box of the penny-post (then newly established in that town), every one of which had come safe to hand, he stood up, and deliberately emptied his fish-basket by small handfuls into the receptacle for letters, till it was quite choked up. Finding it would hold no more, he walked into the post-office, and reproached the astonished officials for having so small and inconvenient a box! Finding me laugh at this blunder of his countryman, he followed it up by an anecdote of one of his country-women, a servant girl-for Irish menials abound in American families which cannot afford to hire others. He assured me it was a fact, and that he knew the parties well :-"A genuine bogtrottress, of pure Milesian breed, and as raw," to use W-r's words, as "an under-boiled potatoe, was set by her mistress to cook some lobsters, to be eaten in the evening at a supper party. Some time after they had been put on the fire, her mistress sent her to look how they got on; she soon returned, with staring eyes, looking like one bewitched, and said "the deevil's flown away wi' the durty craturs, for sorrow a bit could she find o' them." The lady, sure enough, on looking into the pot, found nothing there but boiling-water. The fact was, the animals had

n

1 LOSE MY "CHARACTER."

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been put into cold water, and as that gradually heated they began to dislike their position, and so the one nearest the top of the unlidded pot had probably thrust out his readiest claw and got on to the ground: the others following the example-it must have been a general sauve qui peut ; they were found, some under the bed,-one having stept into a nameless vase to cool himself some here and some there-in short in every place but where well-brought-up lobsters ought to be." I thought the story the less improbable as it took place in New York, where I may mention, by the way, fishmongers' shops are few or none. Amateurs of shell and other fish generally are taken to the harbour, one portion of which is fitted up with a well constructed piscinium, being a kind of floating frame-work pervious to water, which rises and falls with the tide, and is boxed off into compartments; in these are kept every variety of fish alive, so that an abundant choice is to be had for the table, and that too at prices more reasonable than the amateur would be made to pay by the London salesmen.

In a few days, my friend W-r sailed for Europe. He parted from me most affectionately, and said he hoped to see me some day in Ireland. Almost his last words were I can tell you, you will not stay long in this cursed country; mark what I say—you will find it come true."

58

AMERICAN STEAM-BOATS.

LETTER VI.

EXCURSION TO ALBANY, &c.

HAVING danced attendance on different individuals for three days, and not seeing my way clearly, I began to grow tired of New York, and thought it would be an agreeable way of spending unavailable time to penetrate a little into the interior; it would give certain gentlemen time to think of some offers of service I had made them, and which they seemed to be in no hurry to give a definite answer to. I accordingly got on board one of the Albany steam-boats, one fine morning, the sun shining bright, and the morning air sweetly pure. There is a peculiar clearness in the atmosphere of America, which has been remarked on by Mrs. Butler. I always thought the stars shone more vividly there than here, and I have seen the moon so dazzlingly bright that it really was painful to look at her; and I believe I saw Halley's comet much more distinctly there than I should have done in Europe.

The Albany steam-boats are of a considerable size, and divided into three stories. The double engines are of great power, and their furnaces fed, not with coal like ours, but with massive pine logs. There is a very well-served ordinary, at a reasonable rate. It is easy to imagine that the dinner party one sits

THE NOBLE RIVER HUDSON.

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59

down with must be rather numerous, when it is considered that these boats often convey more than five hundred passengers at one trip. Indeed, it is impossible to accommodate all at one sitting, so that it is necessary to serve each meal twice. The decks

There are

of such a vessel present a lively scene. waiters, shoe-blacks, barbers, barmen, cooks, sailors, engineers, stokers, &c., all bustling about as in a crowded street. Still they are by no means the largest steam-boats on the American rivers. In the south-west-on the Mississippi for instance they are enormous, some of them being full two hundred feet long, and bulky in proportion. These last will sometimes go two thousand miles into the interior. Five thousand persons have passed to or from New York and Albany in a day. It is estimated that no fewer than a million go by them every year. The passage, one hundred and fifty miles, is always made within twelve, and sometimes under ten, hours.

The Hudson runs up into the country in an almost straight line; there is no finer river in the world, so far as it goes, for navigation; it has, indeed, but a short course for an American river of distinction, being only three hundred miles long; while the Mississippi, including the Missouri, descends four thousand four hundred miles before -reaching the sea. The latter was always called by the Indians "the parent of waters." Leaving Hoboken on the left, we pass by Sing-sing, where is the prison

for the city of New York; there being but a small

building there for the temporary lodging of criminals.

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AMERICAN PRISONS-ANECDote.

But the great state prison is at Auburn, where the criminals are put to hard labour, and all intercourse with each other, either by word or sign, is strictly forbidden. At meals they sit back to back; every look is vigilantly watched, and all infractions of the rule laid down are severely punished; yet even this is not so bad as the solitary-cell system of the Eastern Penitentiary of Pennsylvania. There every prisoner is kept quite apart from his fellows; and never sees any one but his keeper, not even his nearest friends; neither is he permitted to have any communication with his connexions, except at the discretion of the jailer. By such treatment, some, sentenced for long periods, have grown crazy. Conversing with a gentleman on board the steam-boat respecting the effects of these two systems, and contrasting them with the old mode of treatment, he related an anecdote which is curious, as showing the effects of imagination on the human frame.

At the time the cholera was ravaging the States a few years ago, all knowledge of its existence was carefully shut out from the prisoners at Auburn, and not one of them was ever attacked with it, or likely to be. But it so fell out that, one unlucky Sabbath-day, when the malady had nearly ceased, the chaplain of the prison, in the fulness of his heart, could not help offering up grateful thanks to God for his goodness in staying the ravages of the retiring pestilence. He enlarged too much on the occasion, and with ill-timed eloquence and in strong colours. depicted the sad symptoms of what had so