I was not sick till long after we passed Margate, and deep was the pleasure I drank in with the sea-breeze; divine the delight I drew from the heaving Channel waves, from the seabirds on their ridges, from the white sails on their dark distance, from the quiet yet beclouded sky, overhanging all. In my reverie, methought I saw the continent of Europe, like a wide dreamland, far away. Sunshine lay on it, making the long coast one line of gold; tiniest tracery of clustered town and snow-gleaming tower, of woods deep massed, of heights serrated, of smooth pasturage and veiny stream, embossed the metal-bright prospect. For background, spread a sky, solemn and dark blue, and⁠—grand with imperial promise, soft with tints of enchantment⁠—strode from north to south a God-bent bow, an arch of hope.

Cancel the whole of that, if you please, reader⁠—or rather let it stand, and draw thence a moral⁠—an alliterative, text-hand copy⁠—

“Daydreams are delusions of the demon.”

“Daydreams are delusions of the demon.”

Becoming excessively sick, I faltered down into the cabin.

Miss Fanshawe’s berth chanced to be next mine; and, I am sorry to say, she tormented me with an unsparing selfishness during the whole time of our mutual distress. Nothing could exceed her impatience and fretfulness. The Watsons, who were very sick too, and on whom the stewardess attended with shameless partiality, were stoics compared with her. Many a time since have I noticed, in persons of Ginevra Fanshawe’s light, careless temperament, and fair, fragile style of beauty, an entire incapacity to endure: they seem to sour in adversity, like small beer in thunder. The man who takes such a woman for his wife, ought to be prepared to guarantee her an existence all sunshine. Indignant at last with her teasing peevishness, I curtly requested her “to hold her tongue.” The rebuff did her good, and it was observable that she liked me no worse for it.