[54] Of course the captain is undisputed master of the boat, and any disorders, quarrels, etc., which may arise, are settled by his authority. Any passenger, guilty of misbehaviour, is either confined or sent immediately on shore, no matter how far from his intended destination. I once saw very summary justice performed on a troublesome fellow who was disturbing the whole society on board one of the North River steamers. He was put into the small boat with the captain and a stout-looking sailor, and very comfortably deposited on some rafts which were floating along shore, about twenty miles below West Point, whither he was bound. [55] The quantity of one's companions in these conveyances is not more objectionable than their quality sometimes. As they are the only vehicles, and the fares charged are extremely low, it follows, necessarily, that all classes and sorts of people congregate in them, from the ragged Irish emigrant and the boorish back-countryman, to the gentleman of the senate, the supreme court, and the president himself. [56] The manners of the young girls of America appear singularly free to foreigners; and until they become better acquainted with the causes which produce so unrestrained a deportment, they are liable to take disadvantageous and mistaken impressions with regard to them. The term which I should say applied best to the tone and carriage of American girls from ten to eighteen, is hoydenish; laughing, giggling, romping, flirting, screaming at the top of their voices, running in and out of shops, and spending a very considerable portion of their time in lounging about in the streets. In Philadelphia and Boston, almost all the young ladies attend classes or day schools; and in the latter place I never went out, morning, noon, or evening, that I did not meet, in some of the streets round the Tremont House, a whole bevy of young school girls, who were my very particular friends, but who, under pretext of going to, or returning from, school, appeared to me to be always laughing, and talking, and running about in the public thoroughfares; a system of education which we should think by no means desirable. The entire liberty which the majority of young ladies are allowed to assume, at an age when in England they would be under strict nursery discipline, appears very extraordinary; they not only walk alone in the streets, but go out into society, where they take a determined and leading part, without either mother, aunt, or chaperon of any sort; custom, which renders such an appendage necessary with us, entirely dispenses with it here; and though the reason of this is obvious enough in the narrow circles of these small towns, where every body knows every body, the manners of the young ladies do not derive any additional charm from the perfect self-possession which they thus acquire. Shyness appears to me to be a quality utterly unknown to either man, woman, or child in America.