go by, and leaving his mind open to any wandering impulse that might lay hold upon it. In these days the River Mersey was a great sight, as probably it is still. To the idle young man, accustomed to some share in the perpetual commotion of that coming and going, there was meaning in every one of the multitudinous ships that lay at anchor in the great stream, or glided out, full-sail, to the sea, or were poked and dragged away by a restless, toiling little slave of a steam-tug, carrying off its prey like one of the devils of the Inferno. He knew where they were going, and what they had to bring from afar, and all about their bills of lading and the passengers they carried. The river had not to him that grandeur of prose which becomes poetry, and fact which turns to romance, in less accustomed minds; but was only a huge highway, a big street full of crowds coming and going, over which he brooded, wondering where he should plunge into the tide of movement, and how take his first step out of the horizons which hitherto had bounded him. He did not say, as his mother might have done, “Oh, for the wings of a dove!” but he put that profound breath of human impatience into nineteenth century prose, and said to himself, “If I had but a steamboat, a yacht, anything to take me out of reach of all of them, where they will never hear of me again!” He was not rich enough, however, to hope for a yacht, so that all he could really do was to decide what “boat” he would go with, and whether he should turn his steps across the Atlantic, or choose another quarter of the world in which to become another man.