“Presently Lida came up and touched me, saying in her little awe-struck whisper (which has never been conquered), ’Brother, I am sure I saw one of mother’s cigarettes.’  I said ‘Bosh!’ thinking it an utter delusion; but she was so decided and so frightened, that I told her to go into the saloon, and went forward.  A woman was going about the deck, offering the passengers a basket of candies, lights, cigarettes, and cigars.  Saving for Lida’s words, I never should have recognized her; she was thin to the last degree, haggard, yellow, excessively shabby and forlorn-looking, and with a hollow cough; but as her eyes met mine (those eyes that you say are our water-mark) both of us made a sort of leap as if to go overboard, and I went up to her at once, and would have spoken, but she cried out, ’What have you done with Lida?’ I answered that she was safe, and demanded in my turn where were O’Leary and Jellicoe.  ‘Drowned, drowned,’ she said, ’in the wreck of the Sirius.  They’ll never trouble you more.  But Lida!’ I thought that it was safe to take her into the saloon to see Lida, when they fell into each other’s arms, and afforded the spectators a romantic spectacle.  Don’t think I am making a joke of it, for it was tragic enough in the result of the agitation.  Blood was choking the poor woman.  We could only lay her down on the couch, and happily there were lemons on board.  There was a good-natured Irishman who gave me all the help he could, even to the carrying her to his house, where his wife was equally kind.  He fetched the priest, a French Canadian, and the doctor, and Lida has been watching over her most tenderly; poor things—-they seem really to have cared for one another, and Lida will be the happier for having done these last duties.

“21st.  She is a little better.  So far as we have gathered from one who must not talk nor be agitated, the circus had got into difficulties and debt to Bast, the van proprietor.  I believe Lida’s voice was their last hope, and they had some ghastly scheme of disposing of her in Belgium.  When they lost her, their chances were over, and with the proceeds of their last exhibition, Jellicoe and the O’Leary pair left the elephant, etc., to take care of themselves and make their excuses to Mr. Bast, and started for Liverpool and the U. S. in the Sirius.  Storms overtook them, the women were put into the first boat, those which followed were swamped.  Poor fellows, I own I can’t sing a pious dirge for them.  There were three days of hunger and exposure before the boat was picked up, and she was finally landed at Quebec, where she was laid up with pleurisy in the hospital.  And there was a subscription for the wrecked when she came out, which enabled her to set up this reminiscence of her old trade, drifting from one pier or boat to another till she came to this one, but all the time with this awful cough.  The doctor thinks it her knell; her lungs are far gone, but she may probably rally in some degree for the summer, though hardly so as to be moved.