We steamed out of the Clyde on Thursday night, and early on the
Friday forenoon we took in our last batch of emigrants at Lough
Foyle, in Ireland, and said farewell to Europe.
The company was
now complete, and began to draw together, by inscrutable
magnetisms, upon the decks. There were Scots and Irish in plenty,
a few English, a few Americans, a good handful of Scandinavians, a
German or two, and one Russian; all now belonging for ten days to
one small iron country on the deep.
As I walked the deck and looked round upon my fellow-passengers,
thus curiously assorted from all northern Europe, I began for the
first time to understand the nature of emigration. Day by day
throughout the passage, and thenceforward across all the States,
and on to the shores of the Pacific, this knowledge grew more clear
and melancholy. Emigration, from a word of the most cheerful
import, came to sound most dismally in my ear. There is nothing
more agreeable to picture and nothing more pathetic to behold. The
abstract idea, as conceived at home, is hopeful and adventurous. A
young man, you fancy, scorning restraints and helpers, issues forth
into life, that great battle, to fight for his own hand. The most
pleasant stories of ambition, of difficulties overcome, and of
ultimate success, are but as episodes to this great epic of self-
help. The epic is composed of individual heroisms; it stands to
them as the victorious war which subdued an empire stands to the
personal act of bravery which spiked a single cannon and was
adequately rewarded with a medal.
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