On the present occasion the Massachusetts man was a person whose nerves were as weak as his political convictions were strong, and the democrat being equally gifted with strong opinions, strong nerves, and a tendency towards strong waters, was enabled, particularly after dinner, to obtain an easy victory over his less powerfully gifted antagonist. In fact it was to the weakness of the latter's nervous system that we were indebted for the pleasure of his society on board. Eight weeks before he had been ordered by his medical adviser to leave his wife and office in the little village of Hyde Park to seek change and relaxation on the continent of Europe. He was now returning to his native land filled, he informed us, with the gloomiest forebodings. He had a very powerful presentiment that we were never to see the shores of America. By what agency our destruction was to be accomplished he did not enlighten us, but the ship had not well commenced her voyage before he commenced his evil prognostications. That these were not founded upon any prophetic knowledge of future events will be sufficiently apparent from the fact of this book being written. Indeed, when the mid Atlantic had been passed our Massachusetts acquaintance began to entertain more hopeful expectations of once more pressing his wife to his bosom, although he repeatedly reiterated that if that domestic event was really destined to take place no persuasion on earth, medical or other wise, would ever induce him to place the treacherous billows of the Atlantic between him and the person of that bosom's partner. It was drawing near the end of the voyage when an event occurred which, though in itself of a most trivial nature, had for some time a disturbing effect upon our party. The priest's sister, an elderly maiden lady of placidly weak intellect, announced one morning at breakfast that the sea-captain from Maine had on the previous day addressed her in terms of endearment, and had, in fact, called her his "little duck." This announcement, which was made generally to the table, and which was received in dead silence by every member of the community, had by no means a pleasurable effect upon the countenance of the person most closely concerned. Indeed, amidst the silence which succeeded the revelation, a half-smothered sentence, more forcible than polite, was audible from the lips of the democrat, in which those accustomed to the vernacular of America could plainly distinguish "darned old fool." Meantime, in spite of political discussions, or amorous revelations, or prophetic disaster, in spite of mid-ocean storm and misty-fog-bank, our gigantic screw, unceasing as the whirl of life itself, had wound its way into the waters which wash the rugged shores of New England. To those whose lives are spent in ceaseless movement over the world, who wander from continent to continent, from island to island, who dwell in many cities but are the citizens of no city, who sail away