We are now about one hundred miles from Cape Hatteras. Old Mr. Poddle and his wife are travelling for pleasure. Came to California by rail, concluded to return by the Isthmus. Ever since we started Cape Hatteras has loomed up fearfully in their imaginations. Old Mr. Poddle looks knowingly at passing vessels through his field-glass, but doesn’t know a fore-and-aft schooner from a man-of-war. Mrs. Poddle once a day inquires if there’s any danger. Mr. Poddle does not talk so much, but evidently in private meditates largely on hurricanes, gales, cyclones, sinking and burning vessels. Last night we came in the neighborhood of the Gulf Stream. There were flashes of lightning, “mare’s tails” in the sky, a freshening breeze and an increasing sea. About eleven old Mr. Poddle came on deck. Mrs. Poddle, haunted by Hatteras, had sent him out to see if “there was any danger;” for it is evident that Mrs. Poddle is dictatress of the domestic empire. Mr. Poddle ascended to the hurricane-deck, looked nervously to leeward, and just then an old passenger salt standing by, who had during the entire passage comprehended and enjoyed the Poddletonian dreads, remarked, “This is nothing to what we shall have by morning.” This shot sent Poddle below. This morning at breakfast the pair looked harassed and fatigued. The great question now agitating the mind of this floating community is, “Shall we reach the New York pier at the foot of Canal street by Saturday noon?” If we do, there is for us all long life, prosperity and happiness: if we do not, it is desolation and misery. For Monday is New Year’s Day. On Sunday we may not be able to leave the city: to be forced to stay in New York over Sunday is a dreadful thought for solitary contemplation. We study and turn it over in our minds for hours as we pace the deck. We live over and over again the land-journey to our hearthstones at Boston, Syracuse, and Cincinnati. We meet in thought our long-expectant relatives, so that at last our air-castles become stale and monotonous, and we fear that the reality may be robbed of half its anticipated pleasure from being so often lived over in imagination.