impressive here—" among the fashionable news. But, oh the conventionalities of that a-mazing Europe!"
"Ah!" cried Mr. Norris the father, giving his head a melancholy shake, and looking towards Martin as though he would say, "I can't deny it, sir. I would if I could."
"The limited diffusion of a moral sense in that country!" exclaimed the General. "The absence of a moral dignity in man!"
"Ah!" sighed all the Norrises, quite overwhelmed with despondency.
"I couldn't have realised it," pursued the General, "without being located on the spot. Norris, your imagination is the imagination of a strong man, but you couldn't have realised it, without being located on the spot?"
"Never," said Mr. Norris.
"The ex-clusiveness, the pride, the form, the ceremony," exclaimed the General, emphasizing the article more vigorously at every repetition. "The artificial barriers set up between man and man; the division of the human race into court cards and plain cards, of every denomination, into clubs, diamonds, spades—anything but hearts!"
"Ah!" cried the whole family. "Too true, General!"
"But stay!" cried Mr. Norris the father, taking him by the arm. "Surely you crossed in the Screw, General?"
"Well! so I did," was the reply.
"Possible!" cried the young ladies. "Only think!"
The General seemed at a loss to understand why his having come home in the Screw should occasion such a sensation, nor did he seem at all clearer on the subject when Mr. Norris, introducing him to Martin, said—
"A fellow-passenger of yours, I think? "
"Of mine!" exclaimed the General; "No!"
He had never seen Martin, but Martin had seen him, and recognised him, now that they stood face to face, as the gentleman who had stuck his hands in his pockets towards the end of the voyage, and walked the deck with his nostrils dilated.
Everybody looked at Martin. There was no help for it. The truth must out.
"I came over in the same ship as the General," said Martin, "but not in the same cabin. It being necessary for me to observe strict economy, I took my passage in the steerage."
If the General had been carried up bodily to a loaded cannon, and required to let it off that moment, he could not have been in a state of greater consternation than when he heard these words. He, Fladdock,—Fladdock in full militia uniform, Fladdock the General, Fladdock the caressed of foreign noblemen,—expected to know a fellow who had come over in the steerage of a line-of-packet ship, at a cost of four pound ten! and meeting that fellow in the very sanctuary of New York fashion, and nestling in the bosom of the New York aristocracy! He almost laid his hand upon his sword.
A death-like stillness fell upon the Norrises. If this story should get wind, their country relation had, by his imprudence, for ever disgraced
