Page:The Englishwoman in America (IA englishwomaninam00birdrich).pdf/306

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
292
FEAR AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.
Chap. XIII.

famous in history; wooded slopes and beautiful villas; the Chaudière river, and its pine-hung banks; but I was so ill that even the beauty of the St. Lawrence could not detain me in the saloon, and I went down into the ladies' cabin, where I spent the rest of the day on a sofa wrapped in blankets. A good many of the ladies came down stairs to avoid some quadrilles which a French Canadian lady was playing, and a friend of mine, Colonel P———, having told some one that I had had the cholera, there was a good deal of mysterious buzzing in consequence, of which I only heard a few observations, such as—"How very imprudent!" "How very wrong to come into a public conveyance!" "Just as we were trying to leave it behind too!" But I was too ill to be amused, even when one lady went so far as to remove the blanket to look at my face. There was a very pale and nervous-looking young lady lying on a sofa opposite, staring fixedly at me. Suddenly she got up, and asked me if I were very ill? I replied that I had been so. "She's had the cholera, poor thing!" the stewardess unfortunately observed. "The cholera!" she said, with an affrighted look; and, bastily putting on her bonnet, vanished from the cabin, and never came down again. She had left Quebec because of the cholera, having previously made inquiries as to whether any one had died of it in the John Munn; and now, being brought, as she fancied, into contact with it, her imagination was so strongly affected that she was soon taken seriously ill, and brandy and laudanum were in requisition. So great was the fear of contagion, that, though