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inch; imagine the ship herself, with every pulse and artery of her huge body swollen and bursting under this maltreatment, sworn to go on or die; imagine the wind howling, the sea roaring, the rain beating, all in furious array against her; picture the sky both dark and wild, and the clouds, in fearful sympathy with the waves, making another ocean in the air; add to all this the clattering on deck and down below, the tread of hurried feet, the loud, hoarse shouts of seamen, the gurgling in and out of water through the scuppers, with every now and then the striking of a heavy sea upon the planks above, with the deep, dead, heavy sound of thunder heard within a vault, and there is the head wind of that January morning.

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"I say nothing of what may be called the domestic noises of the ship, such as the breaking of glass and crockery, the tumbling-down of stewards, the gambols overhead of loose casks and truant dozens of bottled porter, and the very remarkable and far from exhilarating sounds raised in their various state-rooms by the seventy passengers who were too ill to get up to breakfast, I say nothing of them; for, although I lay listening to this concert for three or four days, I don't think I heard it for more than a quarter of a minute, at the expiration of which term I lay down again excessively seasick.

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"It was materially assisted, I have no doubt, by a heavy gale of wind, which came slowly up at sunset,

when we were about ten days out, and raged with gradually-increasing fury until morning, saving that it lulled for an hour a little before midnight. There was something in the unnatural repose of that hour, and in the after-gathering of the storm, so inconceivably awful and tremendous, that its bursting into full violence was almost a relief.

"The laboring of the ship in the troubled sea on this night I shall never forget. • Will it ever be worse than this?' was a question I had often heard asked when every thing was sliding and bumping about, and when it certainly did seem difficult to comprehend the possibility of any thing afloat being more disturbed, without toppling over, and going down. But what the agitation of a steam-vessel is, on a bád winter's night in the wild Atlantic, it is impossible for the most vivid imagination to conceive. To say that she is flung down on her side in the waves, with her masts dipping into them, and that, springing up again, she rolls over on the other side, until a heavy sea strikes her with the noise of a hundred great guns, and hurls her back; that she stops and staggers and shivers, as though stunned, and then, with a violent throbbing at her heart, darts onward like a monster goaded into madness, to be beaten down and battered and crushed and leaped on by the angry sea; that thunder, lightning, hail, and rain and wind, are all in fierce contention for the mastery; that every plank has its groan, every nail its shriek, and every

drop of water in the great ocean its howling voice, — is nothing. To say that all is grand, and all appalling and horrible in the last degree, is nothing. Words cannot express it. Thoughts cannot convey it. Only a dream can call it up again in all its fury, rage, and passion.

"And yet, in the very midst of these terrors, I was placed in a situation so exquisitely ridiculous, that even then I had as strong a sense of its absurdity as I have now, and could no more help laughing than I can at any other comical incident happening under circumstances the most favorable to its enjoyment. About midnight, we shipped a sea, which forced its way through the skylights, burst open the doors above, and came raging and roaring down into the ladies' cabin, to the unspeakable consternation of my wife and a little Scotch lady, who, by the way, had previously sent a message to the captain by the stewardess, requesting him, with her compliments, to have a steel conductor immediately attached to the top of every mast, and to the chimney, in order that the ship might not be struck by lightning. They, and the handmaid before mentioned, being in such ecstasies of fear that I scarcely knew what to do with them, I naturally bethought myself of some restorative or comfortable cordial; and, nothing better occurring to me at the moment than hot brandy and water, I procured a tumblerful without delay. It being impossible to stand or sit without holding on, they were all heaped together in one corner of a long sofa,—a fixture ex

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tending entirely across the cabin, where they clung to each other in momentary expectation of being drowned. When I approached this place with my specific, and was about to administer it, with many conciliatory expressions, to the nearest sufferer, what was my dismay to see them all roll slowly down to the other end! And when I staggered to that end, and held out the glass once more, how immensely baffled were my good intentions by the ship giving another lurch, and their all rolling back again! I suppose I dodged them up and down this sofa for at least a quarter of an hour, without reaching them once; and, by the time I did catch them, the brandy and water was diminished, by constant spilling, to a teaspoonful. To complete the group, it is necessary to recognize in this disconcerted dodger an individual very pale from sea-sickness, who had shaved his beard and brushed his hair last at Liverpool, and whose only articles of dress (linen not included) were a pair of dreadnought trousers, a blue jacket formerly admired upon the Thames at Richmond, no stockings, and one slipper.

"Of the outrageous antics performed by that ship next morning, which made bed a practical joke, and getting up, by any process short of falling out, an impossibility, I say nothing; but any thing like the utter dreariness and desolation that met my eyes when I literally 'tumbled up' on deck, at noon, I never saw. Ocean and sky were all of one dull, heavy, uniform lead-color.

There was no extent of prospect, even over the dreary waste that lay around us; for the sea ran high, and the horizon encompassed us like a large black hoop. Viewed from the air, or some tall bluff on shore, it would have been imposing and stupendous, no doubt; but, seen from the wet and rolling decks, it only impressed one giddily and painfully. In the gale of last night, the lifeboat had been crushed by one blow of the sea, like a walnut-shell; and there it hung dangling in the air, a mere fagot of crazy boards. The planking of the paddleboxes had been torn sheer away. The wheels were exposed and bare; and they whirled and dashed their spray about the decks at random. Chimney white with crusted salt, topmast struck, storm-sails set, rigging all knotted, tangled, wet, and drooping, a gloomier picture it would be hard to look upon."

Mr. Dickens touched Boston first, and, of course, visited Boston's famous institutions, among them that for the blind, at South Boston, which was then, as now, presided over by his personal friend, that world-renowned philanthropist, Dr. Samuel G. Howe.

Dickens says, —

Mr.

"I went to see this place one very fine winter morning, an Italian sky above, and the air so clear and bright on every side, that even my eyes, which are none of the best, could follow the minute lines and scraps of tracery

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