Page:An Epistle to Posterity.djvu/48

Rh "Yes, sir," I said, not knowing what else to say. As I had never had any discontent, and did not very well remember what solvent meant, I was somewhat discouraged. However, the order came, "Ladies cross over," and I bounded off willingly. I learned afterwards that he was the governor of some Western State, and he made his peace by bringing me next day great bunches of the beautiful redbud from the shore.

We paused often to take on freight and passengers at places which Dickens was afterwards to make immortal in Martin Chuzzlewit; but although they did look rather forlorn, I never knew of the fact until long after. I suppose "dancing had been the solvent of my discontent," for I never was happier; and I remember that Ohio River steamboat, the good food, the music of that negro band, and the courtesy of the Western captain with great delight. The Ohio is a magnificent river. The season was spring. I kept on making mistakes, and blushing for fear that my father would call me "Mary Elizabeth," which was the beginning of a scolding; but I suppose the bloom of youth must have covered a multitude of sins, for I always seemed to come up smiling. In fact, "life was a joke which had just begun," and I had Pickwick and Oliver Twist to read. The guards of that boat, looking out on the moving panorama of the Ohio, was an ideal place to sit of a warm spring morning. I was travelling into the Unknown, and it was like the fabled stuff of Damascus — whichever way you turned it, it was scarlet and gold.

Sorrow was not far off, for when we got to St. Louis my father broke down with a severe illness, and we were there three weeks in the house of a dear set of cousins, who saved his life.

I saw things with sadly anxious eyes; the city, now so