people, darting off to the Antipodes with an
eager, straining rush. As for New York,
or Boston, or Philadelphia, those seaports
are only considered as being "over the way,"
easy little trips across the water, to be
accomplished with a carpet-bag and a hat-box,
and with as little fuss and ceremony as
a ride in one of the little ferry steamers that
ply between Liverpool and Birkenhead, or
Seacombe and Tranmere. Gentlemen go
coolly off to Melbourne and Port Philip in
Alpaca coats and wide-awakes; ladies, to
Adelaide and Geelong with blue pokes to
their bonnets, and lapsful of crochet work as
though they were going picnicking. Sunburnt
captains, bound for the other side of the
world, set off in their shirt-sleeves, and tell
their smiling cheerful spouses just to mind
the baby, and have dinner ready at four
o'clock in about eight months time or so. Oh,
cherrily, cheerily! Cheerily, oh! A thousand
hammers coopering water-casks take up the
cry; a thousand shovels shovelling potatoes
into the hold for stock re-echo it. Stand out of
the way there! Here is a waggon-load of
preserved provisions: mock-turtle soup and
stewed mushrooms in tin cases hermetically
sealed; green peas and fresh mint, to be eaten
under the line. Make way there for the live
stock for the emigrant ship, Gold Nugget—
sheep, poultry, and a milch cow. Mind yourself!
a bullock has broken loose from the Jack
Robinson, for Sydney. He is a patriotic
beast: England, with all its faults, he loves
it still; and, if he is to be made steaks of, he
prefers being eaten on this side of the
equinoctal line. Stand from under! a giant
crane is hoisting blocks of Wenham Lake ice
on board the Melbourne packet Bushranger.
They are all pressed for time, they are all
going, cheerily, cheerily; they are all, if you
will pardon me the expression, in such a devil
of a hurry.

But the trunks, my dear Sir, the trunks!
Can you, sensible, cautious, discreet as I am
sure you are, forbear, when you gaze on these
trunks, forbear holding your head with your
hands, or leaping into the air with a short
howl, in sheer frenzy. The trunks! Roods,
perches, acres of land covered with great
sea-chests, trunks, bonnet-boxes, chaise boxes,
portmanteaus, valises, trunks of piebald leather,
calf-skin, marble paper, morocco, Russia
leather, oak, mahogany, and plain deal.
Avalanches of trunks, with surely sufficient
literature pasted inside to set up the schoolmaster
abroad in Australia for years to come. As
for such small articles as carpet-bags, desks,
hat-boxes, writing-cases, and railway rugs,
they are as plentiful as ratafia cakes, twenty
a penny. Children of tender years stagger
by with trunks; stalwart porters carry piles
of them, as waiters at eating-houses carry the
tin dishes and covers. Grim spectres hover
about, moaning weird complaints of phantom
boxes lost or mislaid, and point with skinny
fingers to invisible crockery-ware packed in
straw. I come upon the lone female in the
bombazine dress and the triangular bonnet.
She sits forlorn, " remote, unfriended, melancholy
slow," inexpressible misery on her wan
face, stranded high and dry on a band-box.
Her " things " have departed from her ; an
oak chest has been shipped bodily for
Montevideo, and three mattresses and a paillasse
went out to the best of her belief in the King
Odin. She is going to Celebes. Now what
can this good woman be going to do at
Celebes'? I puzzle myself mightily with this
question, staring like one distraught at this
lone woman, sitting under the Dock shed like
a Banshee on a band-box, till the edge of a
hard-hearted oaken chest coming violently on
my toes sufficiently admonishes me to mind
my own concerns.

Still cheerily, cheerily to all parts of the
deep waters whither ships go, till I stroll
down to a remote quay to change the scene,
and see the Irish packets come in. Yet
even here 'tis but the old song to a somewhat
fresher tune, for the mobs of poor Irish
who are landed, pell mell, from the Dublin,
and Belfast, and Cork steamers, are off again
for America to-morrow or the next day.
Tumbling ashore they come—ragged, dirty,
draggle-tailed, and (to trust their looks) half-starved.
Gaunt reapers and bogtrotters in
those traditional blue body-coats, leathern
smalls, and bell-crowned hats, that seem to
be manufactured nowhere save in Ireland;
grizzled old women, bent double with age and
infirmity; children who seem to have sprung
up like some crass fungus of decomposition
rather than to have been born; and slatternly
girls with shawls huddled over their heads.
Some of the men have thick shoes, passably
holey; but three-fourths of the females and
all the children have neither shoes nor stockings.
Some of the women carry heaps of
what, at first sight, you might take for foul
rags, but which, moving and crying suddenly,
you discover to be babies. Their luggage is
on their backs, or in despairingly small and
dirty bundles slung on sticks. They have a
plurality of nothing save children. They
may have money, some of these miserable
objects—the bare price of their passage to
America—sewn up in tattered petticoats and
sleeve linings; but, whether they have or not,
they have no sooner set foot on the quay than
they fall a-begging, tendering the hand for
charity mechanically, as a snuff-taker's finger
and thumb would seek his nose. They sit
down stolidly on posts, or crouch on the bare
ground, staring around with vacant listless
eyes, as though they had landed in the Moon
and didn't know the way to the mountains
in it. And, poor souls! for aught they know
of the land they have now set their weary
feet upon, they might just as well be in the
Moon, I trow. Presently come to them some
of their own countrymen in darned coats and
patched smalls, keepers of styes called lodging-houses
and dens called taverns. To these