The plank is drawn in, the wheels begin to paw like foaming steeds impatient to be off, the bell rings as if it were letting down the steps of the last hackney-coach, and away darts the boat, like half a town suddenly slipping off and taking a walk on the water. The "hands" (who follow their nomenclature literally, and have neither eyes nor bowels) trip up all the little children and astonished maids in coiling up the hawser: the

Fulton and the Hudson River Steamboat 137

black head-waiter rings a hand-bell as if he were crazy, exhorting "Them passengers as has n't settled to step to the Cap'n's office and settle," and angry people who have lost sight of their portmanteaus and selfish people who will )wt get up to let the young gentleman see if his penny trumpet is under them, play a reallife farce better than Keeley or Liston. A painted notice and a very fat black woman in the doorway inform the gentleman who has not seen his wife since the boat started, and is not at all sure that she is on board, that "No gentleman is permitted to enter the ladies' cabin," and spite of his dreadful uncertainty, he is obliged to trust to the dark Hebe to find her, among three hundred ladies, by description, and amuses all the listeners with his inventory of her dress features and general appearance. The negress disappears, is called twenty ways in twenty seconds, and an hour afterwards the patient husband sees the faithless messenger pass with a glass of lemonade, having utterly forgotten him and the lady in the black bonnet and gray eyes, who may be, for ought he knows to the contrary, wringing her hands at this moment on the wharf at New York. By this time the young ladies are tired of looking at the Palisades, and have taken out their novels, the old gentlemen are poring over their damp newspapers, and the captain has received his fourteen hundred or two thousand dollars, locked up his office, and gone to smoke with the black funnel and the engineer.