Having at length wearied myself with gazing, and feeling chill and weak from the coldness and tenuity of the atmosphere, I subsided into the comfort and companionship of the cabins below. Among the passengers I recognized _attachés_ of the press, besides several gentlemen of Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, with whom I was somewhat acquainted. More circumspect, or less slaves to the imagination than myself, they had contented themselves with in-door observations. But their enthusiasm was none the less inflamed. In astonishment they looked at each other; in restless bewilderment they glanced out of the windows on the desert, trackless plane traversed by the "Flying Cloud," and spoke with a species of awe of the shock which the announcement of what they were then witnessing would give to sober men's minds; and suggested, in broken sentences, some of the consequences which would be likely to flow from the grand invention. What with excitement and lack of sleep, we all found ourselves a little nervous. Coffee and Havanas failed to allay the feeling; and, in the absence of the morning papers, we resorted to whist, chess, and our pocket supplies of the "Atlantic Monthly," "Harper," and so forth, and to the very select library provided by Messrs. Bonflon and De Aëry, the proprietors, for the use of the passengers,--and at last to our beds. It could not be denied that we were nervous. With all the smoothness and beauty of our running, there was a sensation, an uncertain quivering motion, not at first noticed and not at all definable, about our craft, that constantly, suggested the idea that we were standing on nothing, or, at best, nothing better than dissolving quicksands, which were liable at any moment wholly to slide away and leave us; and it required some strength of mind to resist the vagary, and prevent it from effecting a troublesome lodgment in the imagination. Thus passed the day, which fortunately, in my case, was succeeded by a night of repose. The restlessness of mind and body once subdued, Nature asserted her empire, and I slept profoundly until morning. Another day and night followed, with little variation from the first; and by this time, the strangeness and mystery of my situation had quite worn away, and the feeling of security was established. I trod the upper deck with all the pride, and more than the composure, of a modern monarch on his throne.