Up the harbor of Liverpool.--We all emerge as
butterflies.--The Mersey tender.--Lot's
wife.--"Any tobacco?"--"Names, please."--St.
George's Hall.--The fashionable promenade.--The
coffee-room.--The military man who showed the
purple tide of war in his face.--The railway
carriage.--The young man with hair all
aflame.--English villages.--London.--No place for
us.--The H. house.--The Babes in the Wood.--The
party from the country.--We are taken in charge by
the Good Man.--The Golden Cross.--Solitary
confinement.--Mrs. B.'s at last.
WE steamed up the harbor of Liverpool the next morning. New Brighton,
with its green terraces, its Chinese-pagoda villas, spread out upon one
side, upon the other that solid wall of docks, the barricade that breaks
the constant charges of the sea, with the masts of ships from every land
for an abattis. The wraps and shapeless garments worn so long were laid
aside; the pretty hood which had, like charity, covered so many sins of
omission, hidden, itself, at last, the soft wool stiffened with the sea
spray, the bright colors dimmed by smoke, and soot, and burning sun. We
crept shyly upon the deck in our unaccustomed finery, as though called
at a moment's notice to play another woman's part, half-learned. Not in
us alone was the transformation. The girl in blue had blossomed into a
bell--a blue bell. The Cattle Man, his hands released at last from the
thraldom of his pockets, stalked about, funereal, in wrinkled black. A
solferino neck-tie and tall hat of a pie-Adamite formation
transmogrified our Mowing Machine friend. Nondescripts, that had lain
about the deck wrapped in cocoons of rugs and shawls, emerged
suddenly--butterflies! A painful courtesy seized us all. We had doffed
the old familiar intercourse with our sea-garments. We gathered in
knots, or stood apart singly, mindful at last of our dignity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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