Our Embarkation.--Leave-taking.--Our Abigail.--Bay of New York. --The Hudson.--Ominous Prediction.--The Prophet falsified.--Enter the Atlantic.--"Land-birds."--Our Master.--Officers of Packet-ships. --Loss of "The Crisis."--The "Three Chimneys."--Calamities at Sea. --Sailing-match.--View of the Eddystone.--The Don Quixote. --Comparative Sailing.--Pilot-boats.--Coast of Dorsetshire.--The Needles. --Lymington.--Southampton Water.--The Custom-house.
"Passengers by the Liverpool, London and Havre packets are informed that a steam-boat will leave the White Hall Wharf precisely at eleven, A.M. to-morrow, June 1st." If to this notice be added the year 1826, you have the very hour and place of our embarkation. We were nominally of the London party, it being our intention, however, to land at Cowes, from which place we proposed crossing the Channel to Havre. The reason for making this variation from the direct route, was the superior comfort of the London ship; that of the French line for the 1st June, though a good vessel and well commanded, being actually the least commodious packet that plied between the two hemispheres.
We were punctual to the hour, and found one of the smaller steamers crowded with those who, like ourselves, were bound to the "old world," and the friends who had come to take the last look at them. We had our leave-takings, too, which are sufficiently painful when it is known that years must intervene before there is another meeting. As is always done by good Manhattanese, the town house had been given up on the 1st of May, since which time we had resided at an hotel. The furniture had been principally sold at auction, and the entire month had passed in what I believed to be very ample preparations. It may be questioned if there is any such thing as being completely prepared for so material a change; at all events, we found a dozen essentials neglected at the last moment, and as many oversights to be repaired in the same instant.
On quitting the hotel, some fifty or a hundred volumes and pamphlets lay on the floor of my bed-room. Luckily, you were to sail on a cruise in a day or two, and as you promised not only to give them a berth, but to read them one and all, they were transferred forthwith to the Lexington. They were a dear gift, if you kept your word! John was sent with a note, with orders to be at the wharf in half an hour. I have not seen him since. Then Abigail was to be discharged. We had long debated whether this excellent woman should, or should not, be taken. She was an American, and like most of her countrywomen who will consent to serve in a household, a most valuable domestic. She wished much to go, but, on the other side, was the conviction, that a woman who had never been at sea would be useless during the passage; and then we were told so many fine things of the European servants, that the odds were unfortunately against her. The principal objection, however, was her forms of speech. Foreign servants would of themselves be a great aid in acquiring the different languages; and poor Abigail, at the best, spoke that least desirable of all corruptions of the English tongue, the country dialect of New England. Her New England morals and New England sense; in this instance, were put in the balance against her "bens," "_an_-gels," "doozes," "nawthings," "noans," and even her "virtooes," (in a family of children, no immaterial considerations,) and the latter prevailed. We had occasion to regret this decision. A few years later I met in Florence an Italian family of high rank, which had brought with them from Philadelphia two female domestics, whom they prized above all the other servants of a large establishment. Italy was not good enough for them, however; and, after resisting a great deal of persuasion, they were sent back. What was Florence or Rome to Philadelphia! But then these people spoke good English--better, perhaps, than common English nursery-maids, the greatest of their abuses in orthoepy being merely to teach a child to call its mother a "mare."