CHARLES DICKENS 14I 



the hatches and paddle-boxes is their gleam on 

 cottages and haystacks, and the monotonous noise 

 of the engines is the steady jingle of the splendid 

 team. Anon, the intermittent funnel roar of pro- 

 test at every violent roll, becomes the regular blast 

 of a high pressure engine, and I recognise the ex- 

 ceedingly explosive steamer in which I ascended 

 the Mississippi when the American civil war was 

 not, and when only its causes were. A fragment 

 of mast on which the light of a lantern falls, an 

 end of rope, and a jerking block or so, become 

 suggestive of Franconi's Circus at Paris where I 

 shall be this very night mayhap (for it must be 

 morning now), and they dance to the self-same 

 time and tune as the trained steed, Black Raven. 

 What may be the speciality of these waves as they 

 come rushing on, I cannot desert the pressing de- 

 mands made upon me by the gems she wore to 

 inquire, but they are charged with something 

 about Robinson Crusoe, and I think it was in Yar- 

 mouth Roads that he first went a-seafaring and 

 was near foundering (what a terrific sound that 

 word had for mc when I was a boy !) in his first 

 gale of wind. Still, through all this, I must ask 

 her (who luas she, I wonder 1) for the fiftieth time, 

 and without ever stopping, Docs she not fear to 

 stray. So lone and lovely through this bleak way. 

 And are Erin's sons so good or so cold. As not to 

 be tempted by more fellow-creatures at the paddle- 



