There was not much on the steamboat to distract our attention from the study of physical geography.All the fashionable travelers had gone on the previous boat or were waiting for the next one.The passengers were mostly people who belonged in the Provinces and had the listless provincial air, with a Boston commercial traveler or two, and a few gentlemen from the republic of Ireland, dressed in their uncomfortable Sunday clothes.If any accident should happen to the boat, it was doubtful if there were persons on board who could draw up and pass the proper resolutions of thanks to the officers.Iheard one of these Irish gentlemen, whose satin vest was insufficient to repress the mountainous protuberance of his shirt-bosom, enlightening an admiring friend as to his idiosyncrasies.It appeared that he was that sort of a man that, if a man wanted anything of him, he had only to speak for it "wunst;" and that one of his peculiarities was an instant response of the deltoid muscle to the brain, though he did not express it in that language.He went on to explain to his auditor that he was so constituted physically that whenever he saw a fight, no matter whose property it was, he lost all control of himself.This sort of confidence poured out to a single friend, in a retired place on the guard of the boat, in an unexcited tone, was evidence of the man's simplicity and sincerity.The very act of traveling, I have noticed, seems to open a man's heart, so that he will impart to a chance acquaintance his losses, his diseases, his table preferences, his disappointments in love or in politics, and his most secret hopes.One sees everywhere this beautiful human trait, this craving for sympathy.There was the old lady, in the antique bonnet and plain cotton gloves, who got aboard the express train at a way-station on the Connecticut River Road.
She wanted to go, let us say, to Peak's Four Corners.It seemed that the train did not usually stop there, but it appeared afterwards that the obliging conductor had told her to get aboard and he would let her off at Peak's.When she stepped into the car, in a flustered condition, carrying her large bandbox, she began to ask all the passengers, in turn, if this was the right train, and if it stopped at Peak's.The information she received was various, but the weight of it was discouraging, and some of the passengers urged her to get off without delay, before the train should start.The poor woman got off, and pretty soon came back again, sent by the conductor; but her mind was not settled, for she repeated her questions to every person who passed her seat, and their answers still more discomposed her.
"Sit perfectly still," said the conductor, when he came by."You must get out and wait for a way train," said the passengers, who knew.In this confusion, the train moved off, just as the old lady had about made up her mind to quit the car, when her distraction was completed by the discovery that her hair trunk was not on board.She saw it standing on the open platform, as we passed, and after one look of terror, and a dash at the window, she subsided into her seat, grasping her bandbox, with a vacant look of utter despair.Fate now seemed to have done its worst, and she was resigned to it.I am sure it was no mere curiosity, but a desire to be of service, that led me to approach her and say, "Madam, where are you going?""The Lord only knows," was the utterly candid ,response; but then, forgetting everything in her last misfortune and impelled to a burst of confidence, she began to tell me her troubles.She informed me that her youngest daughter was about to be married, and that all her wedding-clothes and all her summer clothes were in that trunk; and as she said this she gave a glance out of the window as if she hoped it might be following her.What would become of them all now, all brand new, she did n't know, nor what would become of her or her daughter.
And then she told me, article by article and piece by piece, all that that trunk contained, the very names of which had an unfamiliar sound in a railway-car, and how many sets and pairs there were of each.It seemed to be a relief to the old lady to make public this catalogue which filled all her mind; and there was a pathos in the revelation that I cannot convey in words.And though I am compelled, by way of illustration, to give this incident, no bribery or torture shall ever extract from me a statement of the contents of that hair trunk.
We were now passing Nahant, and we should have seen Longfellow's cottage and the waves beating on the rocks before it, if we had been near enough.As it was, we could only faintly distinguish the headland and note the white beach of Lynn.The fact is, that in travel one is almost as much dependent upon imagination and memory as he is at home.Somehow, we seldom get near enough to anything.The interest of all this coast which we had come to inspect was mainly literary and historical.And no country is of much interest until legends and poetry have draped it in hues that mere nature cannot produce.We looked at Nahant for Longfellow's sake; we strained our eyes to make out Marblehead on account of Whittier's ballad; we scrutinized the entrance to Salem Harbor because a genius once sat in its decaying custom-house and made of it a throne of the imagination.
Upon this low shore line, which lies blinking in the midday sun, the waves of history have beaten for two centuries and a half, and romance has had time to grow there.Out of any of these coves might have sailed Sir Patrick Spens "to Noroway, to Noroway,""They hadna sailed upon the sea A day but barely three,Till loud and boisterous grew the wind, And gurly grew the sea."The sea was anything but gurly now; it lay idle and shining in an August holiday.It seemed as if we could sit all day and watch the suggestive shore and dream about it.But we could not.No man, and few women, can sit all day on those little round penitential stools that the company provide for the discomfort of their passengers.