of these apartments, yclept STATE-ROOMS,--Heaven knows why, except it
be from their want of cosiness,--is full of keen reminiscences to most
Californians who have not outgrown the memories of that dreary interval
when, in obedience to nature's wise compensations, homesickness was
blotted out by sea-sickness, and both at last resolved into a chaotic
and distempered dream, whose details we now recognize. The steamer chair
that we used to drag out upon the narrow strip of deck and doze in,
over the pages of a well-thumbed novel; the deck itself, of afternoons,
redolent with the skins of oranges and bananas, of mornings, damp with
salt-water and mopping; the netted bulwark, smelling of tar in the
tropics, and fretted on the weather side with little saline crystals;
the villanously compounded odors of victuals from the pantry, and oil
from the machinery; the young lady that we used to flirt with, and with
whom we shared our last novel, adorned with marginal annotations; our
own chum; our own bore; the man who was never sea-sick; the two events
of the day, breakfast and dinner, and the dreary interval between; the
tremendous importance giver, to trifling events and trifling people; the
young lady who kept a journal; the newspaper, published on board, filled
with mild pleasantries and impertinences, elsewhere unendurable; the
young lady who sang; the wealthy passenger; the popular passenger; the--
[Let us sit down for a moment until this qualmishness, which these
associations and some infectious quality of the atmosphere seem to
produce, has passed away. What becomes of our steamer friends? Why are
we now so apathetic about them? Why is it that we drift away from them
so unconcernedly, forgetting even their names and faces? Why, when we
do remember them, do we look at them so suspiciously, with an undefined
idea that, in the unrestrained freedom of the voyage, they became
possessed of some confidence and knowledge of our weaknesses that we
never should have imparted? Did we make any such confessions? Perish the
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