Soon the boat arrived at the pier,
and we all went on board; and as I sat in the cabin, looking up through a
broken pane in the skylight, I saw the woman's thin face, with its
anxious, motherly aspect; and the youngest child in her arms, shrinking
from the chill wind, but yet not impatiently; and the eldest of the girls
standing close by with her expression of childish endurance, but yet so
bright and intelligent that it would evidently take but a few days to
make a happy and playful child of her. I got into the interior of this
poor family, and understand, through sympathy, more of them than I can
tell. I am getting to possess some of the English indifference as to
beggars and poor people; but still, whenever I come face to face with
them, and have any intercourse, it seems as if they ought to be the
better for me. I wish, instead of sixpence, I had given the poor family
ten shillings, and denied it to a begging subscriptionist, who has just
fleeced me to that amount. How silly a man feels in this latter
predicament!
I have had a good many visitors at the Consulate from the United States
within a short time,--among others, Mr. D. D. Barnard, our late minister
to Berlin, returning homeward to-day by the Arctic; and Mr. Sickles,
Secretary of Legation to London, a fine-looking, intelligent, gentlemanly
young man. . . . . With him came Judge Douglas, the chosen man of Young
America. He is very short, extremely short, but has an uncommonly good
head, and uncommon dignity without seeming to aim at it, being free and
simple in manners.
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