Page:A hairdresser's experience in high life.djvu/35

Rh home, to set it down in my book of English recollections.

Time passed on rapidly, and Prince Albert came one day, with a great retinue, to the vicinity of Epping Forest, to lay a corner-stone for an orphan asylum. All the neighboring ladies contributed toward the object—some more, some less, according to their means—and it was amusing to see the airs they put on, on delivering the purse to the prince; I thought I should die with laughing at some of them; but I did not: I lived to bid farewell to this happy English family, and to wander away, in the watering season, to Ramsgate.

This far-famed English watering-place, upon whose dangerous coast so many wrecks occur in the stormy seasons of the year, and, indeed, the strolls of the pleasure seekers, in August and September, upon the cliffs and beaches, are often disturbed by harrowing sights of suffering and dying fellow-beings upon the distant rocks. But at last I tired of gathering shells at Ramsgate, and began to have a longing for home. A berth was procured for me, on board of a merchant ship, bound for New York. On arriving on board, and finding but one woman upon the ship, I got off at Gravesend, where I was sent to the pilot's house, and treated very kindly by the pilot's wife and family for some two or three months. Here I had an opportunity of seeing still more of England. I visited all the watering-places in my capacity of hair-dresser, Dover, Brighton, Broadstairs' Bend; saw the curiosities of every place, and was delighted with everything but the canal passage through the Tunnel, which I attempted to perform; but when I found myself