I had the pleasure of making acquaintance with old Mr Tips,—Judge Tips, of Salem, Mass.—his Christian name was Magnentius,—in rather a curious manner. He sat next to me at the general dinner in the best cabin or saloon. The table was crowded, but there were three below me, on the same side of the long board. The dinner was a capital one: the Cunard directors are famous for good feeding; and Judge Tips, father to my young companion, played an excellent knife and fork. A dish of peas came round, the last of the marrow-fats, the latest peas of summer; and indeed I cannot conceive from what remote market the steamboat purveyors had imported them, seeing that Covent Garden had been barren, in respect to this vegetable, for some weeks. I am very fond of peas, and was rejoiced to see my favourites once again; and I anxiously awaited their arrival. Miss Tips, Miss Julia Tips, and Tips _mère_, as the French would say, had each taken a decorous spoonful from the flying dish, and now the black waiter was offering the delicacy to Tips himself, enough being left for five persons at least. What was my horror to behold the Judge deliberately monopolise the whole—sweep, as I live, every pea into his own plate—and then turning to me, with a greasy smile, remark, “I guess, stranger, I’m a whale at peas.”[4] Yes, Mr Bright tells sterling truth. There are some matters in which the most acquisitive of us all are distanced by an American. Judge Tips was obliging enough to favour me with a good deal of his improving conversation, and by meekness and affability I won his heart. He not only invited me to visit him at Salem, but when I hinted that I was on my way to the West, and should be glad to make the acquaintance of any notable citizens of Illinois or Iowa, he gave me the coveted letters of introduction to more than one magistrate, sheriff, and popular preacher. Nor did any accident mar the even tenor of our agreeable passage to New York. We had almost uniform good weather; and before the evening of the eleventh day, we were standing on the wooden landing-places of the Empire City, surrounded by German porters, Irish car-drivers, and Yankee touts. The latter race, wise in their generation, prefer head-work to the toil of actual muscle, and permit old Europe to furnish them with soldiers and foremast-men, stevedores, navvies, and dock labourers; while they supply officers, foremen, mates, and overlookers, to regulate and profit by the exertions of their hirelings.