Martin Chuzzlewit

there were plenty of listeners and few talkers. Those who had been ill all along, got well now, and those who had been well, got better. An American gentleman in the after-cabin, who had been wrapped up in fur and oilskin the whole passage, unexpectedly appeared in a very shiny, tall, black hat, and constantly overhauled a very little valise of pale leather, which contained his clothes, linen, brushes, shaving apparatus, books, trinkets, and other baggage. He likewise stuck his hands deep into his pockets, and walked the deck with his nostrils dilated, as already inhaling the air of Freedom which carries death to all tyrants, and can never (under any circumstances worth mentioning) be breathed by slaves. An English gentleman who was strongly suspected of having run away from a bank, with something in his possession belonging to its strong box besides the key, grew eloquent upon the subject of the rights of man, and hummed the Marseillaise Hymn constantly. In a word, one great sensation pervaded the whole ship, and the soil of America lay close before them; so close at last, that, upon a certain starlight night they took a pilot on board, and within a few hours afterwards lay to until the morning, awaiting the arrival of a steamboat in which the passengers were to be conveyed ashore.

Off she came, soon after it was light next morning, and lying alongside an hour or more⁠—during which period her very firemen were objects of hardly less interest and curiosity than if they had been so many angels, good or bad⁠—took all her living freight aboard. Among them Mark, who still had his friend and her three children under his close protection; and Martin, who had once more dressed himself in his usual attire, but wore a soiled, old cloak above his ordinary clothes, until such time as he should separate forever from his late companions.

The steamer⁠—which, with its machinery on deck, looked, as it worked its long slim legs, like some enormously magnified insect or antediluvian monster⁠—dashed at great speed up a beautiful bay; and presently they saw some heights, and islands, and a long, flat, straggling city.

“And this,” said Mr. Tapley, looking far ahead, “is the Land of Liberty, is it? Very well. I’m agreeable. Any land will do for me, after so much water!”

XVI

Martin disembarks from that noble and fast-sailing line-of-packet ship, The Screw, at the port of New York, in the United States of America. He makes some acquaintances, and dines at a boardinghouse. The particulars of those transactions.

Some trifling excitement prevailed upon the very brink and margin of the land of liberty; for an alderman had been elected the day before; and Party Feeling naturally running rather high on such an exciting occasion, the friends of the disappointed candidate had found it necessary to assert the great principles of Purity of Election and Freedom of Opinion by breaking a few legs and arms, and furthermore pursuing one obnoxious gentleman through the streets with the design of hitting his nose. These good-humoured little outbursts of the popular fancy were not in themselves sufficiently remarkable to create any great stir, after the lapse of a whole night; but they found fresh life and notoriety in the breath of the newsboys, who not only proclaimed them with shrill yells in all the highways and byways of the town, upon the wharves and among the shipping, but on the deck and down in the cabins of the steamboat; which, before she touched the shore, was boarded and overrun by a legion of those young citizens.

“Here’s this morning’s New York Sewer!” cried one. “Here’s this morning’s New York Stabber! Here’s the New York Family Spy! Here’s the New York Private Listener! Here’s the New York Peeper! Here’s the New York Plunderer! Here’s the New York Keyhole Reporter! Here’s the New York Rowdy Journal! Here’s all the New York papers! Here’s full particulars of the patriotic locofoco movement yesterday, in which the whigs was so chawed up; and the last Alabama gouging case; and the interesting Arkansas dooel with Bowie knives; and all the Political, Commercial, and Fashionable News. Here they are! Here they are! Here’s the papers, here’s the papers!”

“Here’s Sewer!” cried another. “Here’s the New York Sewer! Here’s some of the twelfth thousand of today’s Sewer, with the best accounts of the markets, and all the shipping news, and four whole columns of country correspondence, and a full account of the Ball at Mrs. White’s last night, where all the beauty and fashion of New York was assembled; with Sewer’s own particulars of the private lives of all the ladies that was there! Here’s Sewer! Here’s some of the twelfth thousand of the New York Sewer! Here’s Sewer’s exposure of the Wall Street Gang, and Sewer’s exposure of the Washington Gang, and Sewer’s exclusive account of a flagrant act of dishonesty committed by the Secretary of State when he was eight years old; now communicated, at a great expense, by his own nurse. Here’s Sewer! Here’s the New York Sewer, in its twelfth thousand, with a whole column of New Yorkers to be shown up, and all their names printed! Here’s Sewer’s article upon the Judge that tried him, day afore yesterday, for libel, and Sewer’s tribute to the independent Jury that didn’t convict him, and Sewer’s account of what they might have expected if they had! Here’s Sewer, here’s Sewer! Here’s the wide-awake Sewer; always on the lookout; the leading Journal of the United States, now in its twelfth thousand, and still a-printing off. Here’s the New York Sewer!”

“It is in such enlightened means,” said a voice almost in Martin’s ear, “that the bubbling passions of my country find a vent.”

Martin turned involuntarily, and saw, standing close at his side, a sallow gentleman,