There are a good many fictions in the world. I will mention one:--the propeller Markerstown. The bulletins and placards of her owners soar high in the realms of fancy; like Sirens, they sing delightful songs,--and all about "the A 1 fast-sailing, commodious, first-class steam-packet Markerstown." Such is the soaring fiction: now let us look at the sore fact. The "A 1" is, I take it, simply the "Ai!" of the Greek chorus new-vamped for modern wear,--a drear wail well suited to the victims of the Markerstown. As to sailing qualities:--we know, of course, that all speed is relative. For a sea-comet, the Markerstown would be somewhat leisurely, though answering well for an oceanic fixed star, having no perceptible motion. One man on board--the Captain--was accommodated: the kidnapped all suffered. Whether the Markerstown should be reckoned as first-class or last-class is a question depending simply on where the counting begins, and which way it runs. "Steam-packet" she was indeed, though not in the most desirable way. Her steam was "packit" (_Scottice_) too close for safety, but lay quite too loose for speed. The kidnapped were all "packit," and "weel packit." How I came to be one of them, and how by this mystic union I halved my joys and doubled my griefs, as the naughty ones say of wedlock, will soon appear. One brilliant fancy-flight I forgot to mention. The craft in question was boldly proclaimed as "new." New, indeed, she might have been: so were once the Ark, the Argo, the Old Temeraire, the Constitution, and sundry other hulks of celebrity. Yet it is not mere rhetoric to say, that, if the eyes of the second and third Presidents of these United States never, in their declining years, beheld the good ship Markerstown, it was only from lack of wholesome curiosity. This pleasing list of attractions was wont to make an occasional trip--should I not rather say saunter?--to the New-World Levant, the Yankee Eoethen. The time consumed was theoretically a day and a half, but practically a day or two longer. Tired as I was of the sluttish land, the clean sea had an inviting look. Dusty car and ringing rail wore no Circean graces, when the long-haired mermaid, decked in robes of comely green, looked out from her bower beneath the waves, and beckoned me to come. What more welcome than her sea-green home? What sight finer than the myriad diamond-sparkles in her eye? What sound sweeter than the murmurs of her soothing, never-ceasing voice? What perfume so rare as the crisp fragrance breathing from her robes? What so thrilling, so magnetically ecstatic, as her tumultuous heaving, and the lithe, undulating buoyancy of her mazy footfalls?