LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "CECIL DREEME" AND "JOHN BRENT."
KATAHDIN AND THE PENOBSCOT.
CHAPTER I.
OFF.
At five, P. M., we found ourselves--Iglesias, a party of friends, and
myself--on board the Isaac Newton, a great, ugly, three-tiered box
that walks the North River, like a laboratory of greasy odors.
In this stately cinder-mill were American citizens. Not to
discuss spitting, which is for spittoons, not literature, our
fellow-travellers on the deck of the "floating palace" were
passably endurable people, in looks, style, and language. I dodge
discrimination, and characterize them _en masse_ by negations.
The passengers of the Isaac Newton, on a certain evening of
July, 18--, were not so intrusively green and so gasping as Britons,
not so ill-dressed and pretentious as Gauls, not so ardently futile
and so lubberly as Germans. Such were the negative virtues of our
fellow-citizen travellers; and base would it be to exhibit their
positive vices.
And so no more of passengers or passage. I will not describe our
evening on the river. Alas for the duty of straight-forwardness and
dramatic unity! Episodes seem so often sweeter than plots! The
way-side joys are better than the final successes.
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