Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/294

Rh are low. Thus, for instance, I pay for the voyage from Galena to St. Paul's only six dollars, which seems to me quite too little, in comparison with all the good things that I enjoy. I have a charming little “state-room” to myself, and the few upper-class passengers are not of the catechising order. One of them, Mr. Sibley, is a clever, kind man, and extremely interesting to me from his knowledge of the people of this region, and their circumstances. There are also some emigrant-families who are on their way to settle on the banks of the river St. Croix and Stillwater, who do not belong to what are called the “better class,” although they rank with such—a couple of ladies who smoke meerschaum-pipes now and then—and in particular, there are two half-grown girls who are considerably in my way sometimes—especially one of them, a tall, awkward girl in a fiery-red, brick-coloured dress, with fiery-red hair as rough as a besom, and eyes that squint, and who, when she comes out sets herself to stare at me with her arms crossed, her mouth and eyes wide open, as if I were some strange Scandinavian animal, and every now and then she rushes up to me with some unnecessary, witless question. I regard these girls as belonging to—the mythological monsters of the great West; as daughters of its giants, and did not scruple to cut them rather short! Ah! people may come to this hemisphere as democratic as they will, but when they have travelled about a little they will become aristocratic to a certain extent. To a certain extent, but beyond that I shall never go, even though the daughters of the giants become so numerous as to shut out my view. And this brick-coloured, fool-hardy girl would, of this I am certain, with a few kind and intelligent words assume a different mode of behaviour, and if I were to be any length of time with her she and I should become good friends. And there is, in one of these emigrant families, an old grandmother, and yet not