The day the _Ocean Queen_ sailed was a rainy, dismal day. The steamer was crowded, and it required the neatest bit of skill to set one’s crutch down anywhere on the steerage deck without injuring any one’s toes. There were more than fourteen hundred passengers aboard. The steamer did not get out of the harbor before five o’clock, and the purser being busy collecting tickets, I was unable to see him in order to make that little “arrangement;” and as night closed in and we plunged out among the waves of the mighty deep, I felt myself doomed to “turn in” in the steerage. How shall I describe that night of horror? It fairly takes away my appetite to think of it! As the shores disappeared in the darkness and distance, a strong wind blew, the waves rolled savagely, then began that pitching and tossing of the vessel so terrible to the stomachs of the unsailor-like. No sooner had we got “outside” and some slight “motion” was perceptible, than some of the more susceptible passengers grew blue under the eyes and white as a sheet all over the face, and proceeded to manifest their regret for having dined, by violently casting up the masticated provisions, to the celebrated and popular tune of “New York!” Then, as the vessel went plunging on, growing more and more reckless in its manner of tossing itself about, others began to feel the wretched reeling of the brain and morbid heaviness of the stomach—others grew sick, while the already sick grew sicker—others turned deathly pale, groaned in agony, gasped, shrieked “New York!” and let their recently-procured nourishment rush out with a gush, and gush out with a rush; while a wild, agonizing chorus of “O, deary!” “O, Lordy!” “Oo-oo-oo-Godbemerciful,” and the like, resounded and reverberated through the ship, penetrated dark recesses and corners, mingled with the dash of the surging waves without, and the dull splash of repudiated nutrition on the main deck within. As for myself—I wasn’t exactly sick; I’ll never acknowledge that I was, as long as I live. That I felt slightly indisposed—just enough so not to feel in the humor for receiving visitors—I will not deny; but it was not sea-sickness. It was only a kind of nausea and dizziness, accompanied by violent spasms just beneath the lungs and a rapid ejectment from the stomach of some trifling article of food that didn’t agree with me—under the circumstances. I am subject to these spells—usually on the water. On such occasions, the natural depression of spirits makes me rather morose, and I am not apt to talk much. On the occasion in question, all I said was “New York,” when a man asked another where he was from, and I thought he was talking to me. I should have said “Philadelphia,” instead of “New York,” but I didn’t care much, just then, where I was from. Realizing that I had articulated when I was not spoken to, I was about to excuse myself when the vessel plunged violently, and I simply said, “O, Lordy! Ugh!”