SIX HOURS AT SEA. 379 



I have been looking at the world and the world's mat- 

 ters, at my friends and myself, through a darkened 

 medium, and you will but too well comprehend the 

 wherefore of the case when I tell you that my nerves 

 have been affected. Addispn was quite right when he 

 remarked that the habit of looking on only the bright 

 side of things is worth five hundred a-year. 



c My way home from you was divided between a very 

 pleasant drive and one of the most disagreeable, tedious 

 voyages you can think of. I was more than six hours 

 on the Frith, and six such hours ! beating all the way 

 right in the teeth of a strong wind and a heavy tumbling 

 sea, with a sick female passenger who had thrown her- 

 self in a paroxysm of nausea on the floor of the little 

 cabin, where she lay like a corpse, and a set of boatmen, 

 who were too seriously employed in taking in reef after 

 reef as the gale increased, to afford me any amusement. 

 The fellows were too frightened either to make jokes or 

 to understand them. I wish you had seen the expres- 

 sion with which one of them shook his head, and said 

 he hoped we would get through, on my remarking to 

 him that the wind was coming thick and thin like ill- 

 made porridge, and how he shut his eyes and showed 

 his teeth every time a heavier wave sent its spray half- 

 way up the mast. Above all, I wish you had seen the 

 hills of Culbin as they looked this day over the water. 

 Some of the heavier blasts raised the sand in such dense 

 clouds, that when the sun shone they seemed heightened 

 by more than a thousand feet, and towered over the blue 

 hills behind ; but the outlines were faint and ill-defined, 

 and, like the waves that were tumbling around us, they rose 

 and fell with the wind. I got home about six o'clock. 



'I would doubtlessly have derived more pleasure 

 from my visit had I found you enjoying the health and 



