Porcelain Spittoons In Considerable Numbers Garnished The Floor, And Their Office Was By No Means A Sinecure One, Even In The Saloon Exclusively Devoted To Ladies.

I saw only one person whom I liked to speak to, among my three hundred fellow-voyagers.

This was a tall, pale, and very ladylike person in deep mourning, with a perfectly uninterested look, and such deep lines of sorrow on her face, that I saw at a glance that the world had no power to interest or please her. She sat on the same sofa with me, and was helplessly puzzling over the route from Buffalo to Albany with a gruff, uncouth son, who seemed by no means disposed to aid her in her difficulties. As I was able to give her the information she wanted, we entered into conversation for two hours. She soon told me her history, merely an ordinary one, of love, bereavement, and sorrow. She had been a widow for a year, and she said that her desolation was so great that her sole wish was to die. Her sons were taking her a tour, in the hope of raising her spirits, but she said she was just moved about and dressed like a doll, that she had not one ray of comfort, and that all shrunk from her hopeless and repining grief. She asked me to tell her if any widow of my acquaintance had been able to bear her loss with resignation; and when I told her of some instances among my own relations, she burst into tears and said, "I am ever arraigning the wisdom of God, and how can I hope for his consolations?" The task of a comforter is ever a hard one, and in her instance it was particularly so, to point to the "Balm of Gilead," as revealed in sacred Scripture; for a stranger to show her in all kindness that comfort could never be experienced while, as she herself owned, she was living in the neglect of every duty both to God and man.

She seemed roused for the moment, and thanked me for the sympathy which I most sincerely felt, hoping at the same time to renew the conversation in the morning. We had a stormy night, from which she suffered so much as to be unable to leave her berth the next day, and I saw nothing further of her beyond a brief glimpse which I caught of her at Buffalo, as she was carried ashore, looking more despairing even than the night before.

Below this saloon is the ladies' cabin, also very handsome, but disfigured by numerous spittoons, and beneath this again is a small cabin with berths two deep round the sides; and in this abode, as the ship was full, I took a berth for the night with a southern lady, her two female slaves, four negresses, and a mulatto woman, who had just purchased their freedom in Tennessee. These blacks were really lady-like and intelligent, and so agreeable and naïve that, although they chattered to me till two in the morning, I was not the least tired of them.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 92 of 249
Words from 47629 to 48154 of 129941