A patriotic meeting was held in the cabin during the evening. The music and addresses were very enjoyable, till suddenly the sound of hurrying feet was heard overhead, and the news was whispered round that we were "weighing anchor." Soon we began to feel the uncomfortable rolling of the steamer. The orator who was then addressing the meeting, and who had waxed eloquent with his subject, now provoked considerable merriment by his ungraceful and involuntary gestures, clutching desperately at a chair, then taking a fresh hold of the table to steady himself. It well illustrated Demosthenes' famous rule for oratory, "Action! action! action!" But a more serious impression quickly prevailed among the audience, that it was high time to retire, and, like Longfellow's Arabs, they began to "silently steal away." The chairman of the meeting, Mayor Wood, of Brooklyn, unmindful of his usual decorum, upon an extra roll of the steamer went over the back of his chair, and rolled ingloriously upon the floor. He acknowledged that he had never been so completely floored in his life. There was another portly gentleman who, in attempting to navigate, was caught near the cabin door, just behind the knees, by a friendly chair, and as he was suddenly tilted back into it, remarked somewhat dryly, "I believe _I'll sit down_!" Going out on deck, I found that the storm had lifted, the lights of Sandy Hook were far astern, and we were fairly at sea. From this point of time on Monday evening, when we _lay_ on deck, (things were getting too _unsteady_ for landsmen to _stand_,) I omit, out of courtesy to ourselves, any further incidents of the voyage, and pass on to Thursday morning, which found us sitting on the forward deck, waiting and watching for the spires of Charleston. The weather was delightful. As we passed into the warmer southern climate, the sea became calmer and more transparent, schools of porpoises played about the steamer, and one enthusiastic individual insisted that he had seen a whale! but he was set down by one of the disgruntled passengers as "only a pesky oil speculator." The German band on board, or rather the brief remnant of it, still kept up what at the distance of several yards sounded like very dismal music! Presently some one suggested "lemons and lump sugar," as the right remedy for any lingering unpleasantness, and we drew lots as to who should "go below," combat the smells of the cook-room, and purchase them. The announcement that the chance had fallen on my old friend and comrade of the Tenth Rhode Island, William Vaughan, was greeted with roars of laughter. But he got off very much like another fellow described in Pickwick, who spelled his name with a "double you" and a "wee," by liberally feeing some one else to go in his place.