As much as my feelings were taken up by my own intelligence from home, I could not but be amused by a scene in the steerage. The carpenter had been married just before leaving Boston, and during the voyage had talked much about his wife, and had to bear and forbear, as every man, known to be married, must, aboard ship; yet the certainty of hearing from his wife by the first ship, seemed to keep up his spirits. The California came, the packet was brought on board; no one was in higher spirits than he; but when the letters came forward, there was none for him. The captain looked again, but there was no mistake. Poor “Chips,” could eat no supper. He was completely down in the mouth. “Sails” (the sailmaker) tried to comfort him, and told him he was a bloody fool to give up his grub for any woman’s daughter, and reminded him that he had told him a dozen times that he’d never see or hear from his wife again.
“Ah!” said “Chips,” “you don’t know what it is to have a wife, and”—
“Don’t I?” said Sails; and then came, for the hundredth time, the story of his coming ashore at New York, from the Constellation frigate, after a cruise of four years round the Horn—being paid off with over five hundred dollars—marrying, and taking a couple of rooms in a four-story house—furnishing the rooms (with a particular account of the furniture, including a dozen flag-bottomed chairs, which he always dilated upon, whenever the subject of furniture was alluded to)—going off to sea again, leaving his wife half-pay, like a fool—coming home and finding her “off, like Bob’s horse, with nobody to pay the reckoning”; furniture gone—flag-bottomed chairs and all;—and with it, his “long togs,”223 the half-pay, his beaver hat, white linen shirts, and everything else. His wife he never saw, or heard of, from that day to this, and never wished to. Then followed a sweeping assertion, not much to the credit of the sex, if true, though he has Pope224 to back him. “Come, Chips, cheer up like a man, and take some hot grub! Don’t be made a fool of by anything in petticoats! As for your wife, you’ll never see her again; she was ’up keeleg and off’ before you were outside of Cape Cod. You hove your money away like a fool; but every man must learn once, just as I did; so you’d better square the yards with her, and make the best of it.”
This was the best consolation “Sails” had to offer, but it did not seem to be just the thing the carpenter wanted; for, during several days, he was very much dejected, and bore with difficulty the jokes of the sailors, and with still more difficulty their attempts at advice and consolation, of most of which the sailmaker’s was a good specimen.
Thursday, Feb. 25th. Set sail for Santa Barbara, where we arrived on Sunday, the 28th. We just missed of seeing the California, for she had sailed three days before, bound to Monterey, to enter her cargo and procure her license, and thence to San Francisco, etc. Captain Arthur left files of Boston papers for Captain T⸺, which, after they had been read and talked over in the cabin, I procured from my friend the third mate. One file was of all the Boston Transcripts for the month of August, 1835, and the rest were about a dozen Daily Advertisers and Couriers, of different dates. After all, there is nothing in a strange land like a newspaper from home. Even a letter, in many respects, is nothing, in comparison with it. It carries you back to the spot, better than anything else. It is almost equal to clairvoyance.225 The names of the streets, with the things advertised, are almost as good as seeing the signs; and while reading “Boy lost!” one can almost hear the bell and well-known voice of “Old Wilson,” crying the boy as “strayed, stolen, or mislaid!” Then there was the Commencement at Cambridge, and the full account of the exercises at the graduating of my own class. A list of all those familiar names (beginning as usual with Abbot, and ending with W.), which, as I read them over, one by one, brought up their faces and characters as I had known them in the various scenes of college life. Then I imagined them upon the stage, speaking their orations, dissertations, colloquies, etc., with the gestures and tones of each, and tried to fancy the manner in which each would handle his subject, ⸻, handsome, showy, and superficial; ⸻, with his strong head, clear brain, cool self-possession; ⸻, modest, sensitive, and underrated; ⸻, the mouthpiece of the debating clubs, noisy, vaporous, and democratic; and so following. Then I could see them receiving their A.B.’s.226 from the dignified, feudal-looking President, with his “auctoritate mihi commissa,”227 and walking off the stage with their diplomas in their hands; while upon the very same day, their classmate was walking up and down California beach with a hide upon his head.
Every watch below, for a week, I pored over these papers, until I was sure there could be nothing in them that had escaped my attention, and was ashamed to keep them any longer.
Saturday, March 5th. This was an important day in our almanac, for it was on this day that we were first assured that our voyage was really drawing to a close. The captain gave orders to have the ship ready for getting underway; and observed that there was a good breeze to take us down to San Pedro. Then we were not going up to windward. Thus much was certain, and was soon known, fore
