Page:A hairdresser's experience in high life.djvu/18

20 and I left. After this I obtained a situation in the family of Mr. G., our recent member of Congress; and the little baby girl I nursed there, is now in the full blush of early womanhood, whom none can behold but with admiration and respect; and when I see her floating along, with the dignity, grace, and ease of a sylph, upon the street and in the drawing-rooms, I can scarcely realize that it was I who taught her, in her babyhood, to walk. But, as I had rather a vagabond disposition, and loved change, I, soon after this, left the service of this pleasant family, and engaged again as child nurse to a sister of this lady, who was soon to embark with her husband and family for Europe—he having been partially promised a by General Harrison, who had just entered upon his office. The paternals on both sides of my new employers were judges, in high position, and possessed much public influence.

Having accomplished the ceremony of obtaining passports in Washington City, we sailed from New York in February on the "Louis Phillippe," and had a rough passage of twenty-four days across the ocean. A storm, which lasted forty-eight hours, drove us into the Bay of Biscay. The passengers were all fearfully alarmed, and gathered themselves together in groups in the cabin to die together, if such must be their fate. But our vessel weathered the gale, while many others sank beneath it, to be heard from no more till the sea, shall give up its dead.

On the twenty-fourth day "Land ho!" was shouted from the mast-head, and in a few hours more our feet touched the soil of France.

It was night when we arrived in Paris, where all