"Well," says the fellow, eyeing the trunk sideways, "it does look sort of pecular, but still I reckon it's nothing more 'en a trunk, after all--one of the hairy old stagers--but only a trunk, anyhow!" "Sir," says I, with emphatic dignity, for the honor of my ancestors was concerned, "that is a traditional trunk--a testamentary bequest from my grandmother--who was revolutionary in her time." "What," says the man--"what is that you say?" Here a real nice-looking gentleman came up to where I stood, and says he to the man: "You should be more careful, the trunk is evidently an heirloom." "You are very kind," says I, relenting into a bow; "it's only a hair-trunk--grandmother's loom went to another branch of the family." "Well, anyway, I'll put the crather by itself, and bring it to yez safe, marum, never fear," says the Irishman; and with that he sat down on my blessed grandmother's trunk and wiped his face again. Then he waved his dirty hand and motioned that I should go away, which I did, and found E. E. spreading her skirts out wide on a settee, and looking as innocent as twenty lambs if any one seemed to turn anxiously toward the extra seat she was covering up for me. I took the seat thankfully, spread my parasol, and tried to catch a mouthful of air, but there wasn't a breath stirring. The water in the harbor was smooth as a looking-glass. The sky was broad, blue, and so hot with sunshine that it blistered one's face to look up. I put a blue veil around my beehive, and wilted down into my corner of the settee. Dempster stood by us blowing himself with a broad-brimmed hat, but not a breath of air he got. "I'll run down and see how the thermometer is," says he. "Never--never did I swelter under such a stifler in my life." Off he went, swinging his hat. In a few minutes he came back again, panting with the heat. "It's a hundred," says he. "What?" says I. "The thermometer," says he. "And is it that which makes things so hot?" "Of course," says he, "one hundred is as much as we can bear." "Then, why on earth don't they get rid of some? What is the use of piling-up things to this extent? For my part I never will travel on boats that carry these red-hot thermometers again. It's as much as one's life is worth. Nitro-glycerine is nothing to it; that blows you right straight up, but these other things pile on the heat and never come to an end." Congress ought to put a stop to such dangerous freights being piled-up in steamboats. It's enough to breed suicides on the water. Dempster wanted to laugh, I could see that, but his face just puckered up a little, and it was all he could do in that line. So he took a camp-stool, pulled his new white hat over his eyes, and fell into a soggy sort of sleep. There he sat, kind of simmering, like a baked apple in the mouth of an oven, till the steamboat stopped on the end of a sand-bank, and gave a lazy snarl, as if it was glad to get rid of us.