And we went to sea with his name in the roll of passengers, but without his corporeal presence on deck or in cabin. I cannot say that I was altogether sorry. I felt instinctively that I was by far more likely to form an unbiassed judgment when alone. I felt that in company with a man so plausible, so fluent of speech, and so experienced in all the ways of the singular country for which I was bound, I should be in danger of seeing all objects through the rose-coloured haze in which it was the Colonel’s policy to mask them. But, at the same time, I was a little nervous at the prospect of exploring the Far West without a Mentor; and the weight of the responsibility attaching to my report was not exactly reassuring. The packet was crowded, for many were desirous of making use of the last week or two of fine still weather, before the November gales should begin to expend their fury upon the vast breadth of the Atlantic. There were but few Britons on board; but there were Dons in abundance; and great numbers of pallid ladies, with Parisian toilettes and faulty teeth, and of sallow lean-visaged men in tail-coats and varnished boots, returning from a tour of European baths and cities. Also, there were plenty of keen-looking persons, who eyed all mankind with suspicious scrutiny, who had memorandum-books sticking out of the pockets of their black satin vests, and who were probably not unconnected with commercial pursuits and the cotton trade. Aware that I was on my way to a new world in more senses of the word than one, a world whose standard of morality was wholly novel, I took every opportunity of acquiring information which might afterwards prove invaluable. I therefore associated exclusively with natives of the Western Continent, studied their sentiments, and stored up every scrap of information bearing on traffic and transit. I will own that my pride met with frequent abrasions; that my deepest-rooted convictions were rudely assaulted; and that I was unable to avoid observing that my neighbours would have been all the better for a little more attention to the precepts of Lord Chesterfield. We are not always very fastidious in the city: I am constantly obliged to bargain, dine, and converse, with uncommonly rough diamonds; but I do not think that any Cockney alive can contrive to render vulgarity so glaringly offensive as his Yankee congener. I was most unlucky in my fellow-passengers, some of whose habits were distressing to a degree, and did not show any remarkable improvement since the days when Mrs Trollope and Captain Hamilton crossed the Atlantic. I began to owe Sir Walter a grudge for his discovery of tobacco, since tobacco, chewed to pulp, and lubricating the deck and cabin-stairs with its nicotian extract, became the bugbear of my existence. Besides, I prefer to see gentlemen sit with their feet in a more normal position than an undue elevation of the boot soles can afford. I wish our transatlantic