CHAP. XXIII.] A GERMAN STEWARDESS. 53 



wife had thought it polite to visit the ladies cabin, 

 as they might otherwise think her unsociable. She 

 found there a young Irish milliner who had come out 

 from the county of Monaghan, and was settled at 

 Sehna, one of the towns on this river, where she said 

 she was getting on extremely well. There was also 

 a cracker family, consisting of a squalling child and 

 its t\vo parents, who were &quot; moving to the Washita 

 river in Louisiana.&quot; The young mother was smoking 

 a pipe, which her husband, a rough-looking back 

 woodsman, had politely lighted for her. As this prac 

 tice was against the regulations, my wife joined the 

 other ladies in remonstrating, and she immediately 

 went out to smoke in the open air on the guard. I 

 had been before amused by seeing a girl, about nine 

 years old, employed, by way of imitating her elders, 

 in smoking a paper cigar on the deck, and a mother, 

 after suckling an infant of two years, give it some 

 tobacco to chew. 



Another inmate of the ladies cabin was a Ger 

 man stewardess, who soon found out that my wife 

 understood her mother tongue, and, being in great 

 want of sympathy, poured out her tale of suffer 

 ing in the New World with the simplicity of cha 

 racter and unreservedness of her countrywomen. 

 Seven years ago she had been a happy and con 

 tented peasant at Chemnitz in Saxony, one of a 

 united family of Lutherans, when she was persuaded 

 by a priest to embrace the opinions of Martin Stephan, 

 a preacher of Dresden, who taught that all theolo 

 gical study should be confined to the Bible ; that 

 literature and the fine arts, being of human, origin 



