Page:The Englishwoman in America (IA englishwomaninam00birdrich).pdf/100

rush at the viands. There were about 200 people seated in a fetid and dimly-lighted apartment, at a table covered over with odoriferous viands—pork stuffed with onions, boiled legs of mutton, boiled chickens and turkeys, roast geese, beef-steaks, yams, tomatoes, squash, mush, corn-cobs, johnny cake, and those endless dishes of pastry to which the American palate is so partial. I was just finishing a plate of soup when a waiter touched me on the shoulder—"Dinner ticket, or fifty cents;" and almost before I had comprehended the mysteries of American money sufficiently to pay, other people were eating their dessert. So simple, however, is the coinage of the United States, that in two days I understood it as well as our own. Five dollars equal an English sovereign, and one hundred cents make a dollar, and with this very moderate amount of knowledge one can conduct one's pecuniary affairs all over the Union. The simplicity of the calculation was quite a relief to me after the relative values of the English sovereign in the colonies, which had greatly perplexed me: 25s. 6d. in New Brunswick, 25s. in Nova Scotia, and 30s. in Prince Edward Island. I sat on deck till five, when I went down to my berth. As the evening closed in gloomily, the sea grew coarser, and I heard the captain say, "We are likely to have a very fresh night of it." At seven wave went down the companion-way, and washed half the tea-things off the table, and before I fell asleep, the mate put his head through the curtain to say, "It's a rough night, ladies, but there's no danger" a left-handed way of giving courage, which of course frightened the timid. About eleven I was awoke by confused cries, and in my dawning conscious-