Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/150

Rh German companion in the steamer, Several well-bred persons addressed us and asked as many questions as a Yankee would have asked in the same time. Some of them made us smile, such as whether the language in America was not very like that spoken in England! and if New-York had more than thirty thousand inhabitants! Before we separated the girls were on familiar terms with some pretty young ladies going to boarding-school, and half a dozen people, at least, had ascertained whence we came and whither we were going. M. was quite charmed with this unreserve. "Like to like," you know!

There was a lady on board who riveted our attention. Without being handsome, she had the "air noble," that is, perhaps, the best substitute for beauty. Her face was intellectual, and her eyes such as I have never seen except in the head of a certain harpy eagle in the zoological gardens. Lest you should get a false impression from this comparison, I must tell you that these harpy eyes haunted me for days after I saw them reviving, with their human expression and wonderful power, my childish superstition about the transmigration of souls.

"That woman is very ill-bred," said M., "to peer at us so steadily through her eyeglass." "We look at her just as steadily, only without eyeglasses," said L.; and, as none think themselves ill-bred, we came to the silent conclusion that the stranger might not be so. There was something in her air, and in a peculiar, as well as elegance of