pass, true words of appreciation which were
not meant to flatter his own ear. There is a
lunch in the cabin, but our friend is too busy
to be dragged away to it ; we stay with him.
At last, as he is waited for, he is compelled
to go. The emigrants' friends are all again
down stairs, and we go up into the rain, and
into the cabin on deck, and there is lunch.
The steamer is to carry us away at half-past
three. We, too, if you please, will slip away
quietly from this lunch, and fill up the
remainder of our time below, where we shall
see the girls at dinner. They are all seated,
now, in order at their tables, and have wiped
away their tears. They make room for
fathers and sisters by their sides ; their platters
are before them, and they wait patiently.
It was well that the good matron foresaw the
advantages of her sixty sandwich papers. She
is here among her charge now, hard at work.
She will sleep well to-night. There is a pathos
in the pervading gentleness occasioned by the
feelings of the hour. The old clergyman
is down again. He, too, has slipped away,
and come to his poor friends. Now for the
dinner. Here is a man with three watering-
pots, who declares that " they will never be
the things to hold ship's soup. You can't
pour carrots out of them narrow spouts."
The general manager looks grieved at the
notion that he should ever have imagined
such a thing. " Those cans," he says, " are
for tea, or hot water. What is it you want for
soup ?"—" Flat dishes," says the cook.—
" Well, I have provided plenty of flat dishes,"
says the store-master, appealing to the matron.
" I cannot find them, sir, and I've tried very
hard," the matron says. " Come, come, let me
try ; where is the key ? " Accordingly, the
indefatigable old gentleman plunges into the
doctor's cabin, which is at present half full
of tin utensils ; and a tremendous disturbance
becomes audible among the pots and pans.
The flat dishes are soon produced out of the
bottom of the pyramid. And now for dinner !

Roast beef, potatoes, soup—more beef; a
polite, and heartily kind voice of a great
sailor from above us, as he hands his dish
down with a cry of " More soup, ladies ! "
We walk among them, eavesdroppers again.
A wonderful production of salt-cellars, metal
tea-cups, and all kinds of unexpected things,
by their thoughtful friend, the clergyman,
causes that person to be watched with
pleasant curious eyes, as though he were a
conjuror, extracting wonders out of nothing.
Here, a voice cries, " Look, look ; do look at
the little pepper-boxes ! " There, a voice is
murmuring, "It will be our fault if we
are not contented ; " and, throughout, there
is evident a very lively sense of this minute
thoughtfulness, which is, by no means, so
little a matter in its influences as to some it
may appear. Here, is a girl who glances at a
thin creature, sitting at another table, and
calls the attention of a neighbour to her.
" There is poor Annie helping the potatoes ; "
and, by the tone and looks of these two girls,
you see that they regard poor Annie, for
some reason, with peculiar sympathy, and
seem to be of opinion that, after all she may
have suffered, they would like, if possible,
to spare her even the fatigue of ladling out
the potatoes while she is at dinner.

But, after all, there is not much eaten at
this dinner; the hearts are all too full. And,
before it is over, the steamer is alongside, and
the unfinished food is left, and all the girls,
heedless of rain and unbonneted, are upon deck
for the last accents of farewell. Pleasant it
is to see the matron made a prisoner of love,
unable to get free of the fingers which fond
girls put out to her, who had given them
perhaps the first sense of home comfort. A
stout girl, clinging resolutely to a sister who
must go on board the steamer, is standing on
the plank and blocks the way; she is warned
off—not gruffly, far from it. And, though she
holds her place, and clings about her sister,
caring most for the few minutes left for that
embrace, and little for all the world else just
then, (though she tries to make way for the
other passengers,) nobody warns her off
again. We all contrive to pass without
disturbing her. At length the steamer has put
off, the emigrant girls climb to where they
can get the last look of the friends whom
they may see no more. There are attempts
at parting cheers, in which they seem to
choke; there is a mutual waving of
handkerchiefs and hats: a mutual and complete
good-will. The sailors, who have all gathered
in the bow of the ship, give three cheers of a
louder sort to the departing steamer, and to-
morrow morning early the Euphrates will
set sail.

THE MILLER AND HIS MEN.

HALF a century ago affairs were in a
dismal state for bread-eaters. Some people
thought it was a question whether, in a little
while, there would be any bread to eat at
all. The landlords were everywhere
obtaining Inclosure Bills, and this afforded
some hope of a better supply hereafter; and
the excessive dearness of bread inclined a
good many land-owners, and some few
farmers, to attend to what such men as Sir
H. Davy had to set about improving the
productiveness of land, by putting into it the
ingredients required for the composition of
wheat and other grains. Manuring the land
is so familiar a matter to us now, that we are
apt to forget how new a thing it is. Or, if it
be true that the old monks, centuries ago,
taught the art of manuring, to make orchards
and kitchen-gardens productive, the farmers
of England did not carry out the practice in
their fields, or dream of the connexion between
the stuff they spread over the ground and the
plant that was to come out of it. These
farmers laughed when, in 1800, they saw a
few land-owners putting bone manure upon