At Queenstown I awaited the steamer from Liverpool, and about nine
o'clock in the morning was delighted to see her long black form moving
up the bay. She came to anchor about a mile or two out, and a little
tug was in readiness to take us off. A score or more of emigrants, each
with a bag and a box, had been waiting all the morning at the wharf.
When the time of embarkation arrived, the agent stepped aboard the tug
and called out their names one by one, when Bridget and Catherine and
Patrick and Michael, and the rest, came aboard, received their tickets,
and passed "forward," with a half-frightened, half-bewildered look. But
not much emotion was displayed until the boat began to move off, when
the tears fell freely, and they continued to fall faster and faster,
and the sobs to come thicker and thicker, until, as the faces of
friends began to fade on the wharf, both men and women burst out into a
loud, unrestrained bawl. This sudden demonstration of grief seemed to
frighten the children and smaller fry, who up to this time had been
very jovial; but now, suspecting something was wrong, they all broke
out in a most pitiful chorus, forming an anti-climax to the wail of
their parents that was quite amusing, and that seemed to have its
effect upon the "children of a larger growth," for they instantly
hushed their lamentations and turned their attention toward the great
steamer. There was a rugged but bewildered old granny among them, on
her way to join her daughter somewhere in the interior of New York, who
seemed to regard me with a kindred eye, and toward whom, I confess, I
felt some family affinity. Before we had got halfway to the vessel, the
dear old creature missed a sheet from her precious bundle of worldly
effects, and very confidentially told me that her suspicions pointed to
the stoker, a bristling, sooty "wild Irishman." The stoker resented the
insinuation, and I overheard him berating the old lady in Irish so
sharply and threateningly (I had no doubt of his guilt) that she was
quite frightened, and ready to retract the charge to hush the man up.
She seemed to think her troubles had just begun. If they behaved thus
to her on the little tug, what would they not do on board the great
black steamer itself? So when she got separated from her luggage in
getting aboard the vessel, her excitement was great, and I met her
following about the man whom she had accused of filching her bed linen,
as if he must have the clew to the lost bed itself. Her face brightened
when she saw me, and, giving me a terribly hard wink and a most
expressive nudge, she said she wished I would keep near her a little.
This I did, and soon had the pleasure of leaving her happy and
reassured beside her box and bundle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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