Border and Bastille | Page 5

her head, like a glutton in the P. R., would take her
punishment sullenly, without an effort at rising or resistance.
Nevertheless, I stand by "The Asia," as a right good boat for rough
weather, though she is not a flyer, and sometimes could hardly do more
than hold her own. Eighty-one knots in the twenty-four hours was all
the encouragement the log could give one day.
I liked our commander exceedingly. He had just left the Mediterranean
station, and there still abode with him a certain languid levantine
softness of voice and manner; when he came in to dinner, out of the
wild weather, the moral contrast with the turmoil outside was quite
refreshing. Report speaks highly of Captain Grace's seamanship; and I
believe in him far more implicitly than I should in one of those hoarse
and blusterous Tritons, who think roughness and readiness inseparable,
and talk to you as if they were hailing a consort.
The library on board was not extensive, consisting (with the exception
of "The Newcomes") chiefly of religious works of the Nonconformist
school, and tales, which have long ago passed into surplus stock, or
been withdrawn from general circulation. But there was one invaluable
novel, which I shall always remember gratefully. I never got quite
through it, but I read enough to be enabled to affirm, that its principles
are unexceptionable, its style grammatically faultless, and its purpose
sustained (ah, how pitilessly!) from first to last. The few amatory
scenes are conducted with the most rigid propriety; and when there
occurs a lover's quarrel, the parties hurl high moral truths at each other,
instead of idle reproaches. But it is mainly as a soporific, that I would
recommend "Silwood:" on four different occasions, under most trying
circumstances it succeeded perfectly and promptly with me, for which

relief--unintentional, perchance--I tender much thanks to the unknown
author, and wish "more power to his arm."
Quite crippled for the time being by rheumatism, I was in bad form for
clambering about the sloping, slippery planks; nevertheless I did
contrive to crawl up to the hurricane-deck just before sundown, about
the crisis of the gale. I confess to being disappointed in the "rollers:" it
may be that their vast breadth and volume takes off from their apparent
height, but I scarcely thought it reached Dr. Scoresby's standard--from
26 to 30 feet, if I remember right, from trough to crest. One realizes
thoroughly the abysmal character of the turbulent chaos, and there is a
sensation of infiniteness around and below you not devoid of grandeur;
but as an exhibition of the puissance of angry water, I do not think the
mid-ocean tempest equal to the storm which brings the thunder of the
surf full on the granite bulwarks of Western Ireland.
It must be owned, that the conversational powers of our small society
were limited. Very often some selfishness mingled with my sincere
compassion for the prostrated sufferings of my Philadelphian friend of
the tug-boat; for whenever his weary aching head would allow of the
exertion, he could talk on almost any subject, fluently and well. He was
returning from a long visit to Paris, and a rapid tour through Germany
and Southern Europe. Most of the countries, that he had been
compelled to hurry over, I had loitered through in days past, and I
ought to have been shamed by the contrast in our recollections--his, so
clear and systematical--mine, so vague and dim. An intellectual
American travelling through strange lands does certainly look at nature,
animate and inanimate, after a practical business-like fashion peculiar
to his race; but it would be unfair to infer that such minds are,
necessarily, unappreciative. At all events, that concentrative,
synthetical power, that takes in surrounding objects at a single glance,
and retains them in a tolerably distinct classification, is rather enviable,
even as a mental accomplishment.
We did not speak much about the troubles beyond sea, and the
Philadelphian was rather reserved as to his proclivities. My impression
is, that his sympathy tended rather southward (all his early life had

been spent in Alabama), but he declined to commit himself much, nor
do I believe that he was a violent partisan either way. On one point he
was very decided: Falkland himself could not have wished more
devoutly for the termination of a fatal civil war--fatal, he said, to the
interests, present and future, of both the combatant powers--ruinous to
every class, with two exceptions; the adventurers who, having little to
lose, gained, by joining the ranks of either army, a social position to
which they could not otherwise have aspired; and the speculators, who,
directly or indirectly, fairly or unfairly, made gains vast and unholy,
such as wreckers are wont to gather in time of tempest and general
disaster. He scarcely alluded