FROM LONDON TO NEW YORK. 233 



and they at once communicate to each other the itch 

 of authorship. Confine them on board an ocean 

 steamer, and by the third or fourth day a large number 

 of them will break out all over with a sort of literary 

 rash that nothing will assuage but some newspaper or 

 journalistic enterprise, which will give the poems and 

 essays and jokes with which they are surcharged a 

 chance to be seen and heard of men. I doubt if the 

 like ever occurs among travellers of any other nation- 

 ality. Englishmen or Frenchmen or Germans want 

 something more warm and human, if less "refined; " 

 but the average American, when in company, likes 

 nothing so well as an opportunity to show the national 

 trait of " smartness." There is not a bit of danger 

 that we shall ever relapse into barbarism while so much 

 latent literature lies at the bottom of our daily cares 

 and avocations, and is sure to come to the surface the 

 moment the latter are suspended or annulled ! 



While abreast of New England, and I don't know 

 how many miles at sea, as I turned in my deck prom- 

 enade, I distinctly scented the land — a subtle, delicious 

 odor of farms and homesteads, warm and human, that 

 floated on the wild sea air, a promise and a token. 

 The broad red line that had been slowly creeping 

 across our chart for so many weary days, indicating 

 the path of the ship, had now completely bridged the 

 chasm, and had got a good purchase down under the 

 southern coast of New England, and according to the 

 reckoning we ought to have made Sandy Hook that 



