forge; a few years in America and half a score of
ocean voyages having sufficed to modify his speech
into the common pattern. By his own account he
was both strong and skilful in his trade. A
few years back, he had been married and after a fashion
a rich man; now the wife was dead and the money gone.
But his was the nature that looks forward, and goes
on from one year to another and through all the extremities
of fortune undismayed; and if the sky were to fall
to-morrow, I should look to see Jones, the day following,
perched on a step-ladder and getting things to rights.
He was always hovering round inventions like a bee
over a flower, and lived in a dream of patents.
He had with him a patent medicine, for instance,
the composition of which he had bought years ago for
five dollars from an American pedlar, and sold the
other day for a hundred pounds (I think it was) to
an English apothecary. It was called Golden
Oil, cured all maladies without exception; and I am
bound to say that I partook of it myself with good
results. It is a character of the man that he
was not only perpetually dosing himself with Golden
Oil, but wherever there was a head aching or a finger
cut, there would be Jones with his bottle.
If he had one taste more strongly than another, it
was to study character. Many an hour have we
two walked upon the deck dissecting our neighbours
in a spirit that was too purely scientific to be called
unkind; whenever a quaint or human trait slipped out
in conversation, you might have seen Jones and me
exchanging glances; and we could hardly go to bed in
comfort till we had exchanged notes and discussed
the day’s experience. We were then like
a couple of anglers comparing a day’s kill.
But the fish we angled for were of a metaphysical
species, and we angled as often as not in one another’s
baskets. Once, in the midst of a serious talk,
each found there was a scrutinising eye upon himself;
I own I paused in embarrassment at this double detection;
but Jones, with a better civility, broke into a peal
of unaffected laughter, and declared, what was the
truth, that there was a pair of us indeed.
We steamed out of the Clyde on Thursday night, and
early on the Friday forenoon we took in our last batch
of emigrants at Lough Foyle, in Ireland, and said
farewell to Europe. The company was now complete,
and began to draw together, by inscrutable magnetisms,
upon the decks. There were Scots and Irish in
plenty, a few English, a few Americans, a good handful
of Scandinavians, a German or two, and one Russian;
all now belonging for ten days to one small iron country
on the deep.
