Chapter 2

Lord Cram and Lord Vultur.
Sir Brandish O'Cultur,
With Marshal Carouzer,
And old Lady Mouser.

BATH GUIDE.

The assembling of the passengers of a packet-ship is at all times a matter
of interest to the parties concerned. During the western passage in
particular, which can never safely be set down at less than a month, there
is the prospect of being shut up for the whole of that period, within the
narrow compass of a ship, with those whom chance has brought together,
influenced by all the accidents and caprices of personal character, and a
difference of nations, conditions in life, and education. The
quarter-deck, it is true, forms a sort of local distinction, and the poor
creatures in the steerage seem the rejected of Providence for the time
being; but all who know life will readily comprehend that the _pêle-mêle_
of the cabins can seldom offer anything very enticing to people of
refinement and taste. Against this evil, however, there is one particular
source of relief; most persons feeling a disposition to yield to the
circumstances in which they are placed, with the laudable and convenient
desire to render others comfortable, in order that they may be made
comfortable themselves.

A man of the world and a gentleman, Mr. Effingham had looked forward to
this passage with a good deal of concern, on account of his daughter,
while he shrank with the sensitiveness of his habits from the necessity of
exposing one of her delicacy and plastic simplicity to the intercourse of
a ship. Accompanied by Mademoiselle Viefville, watched over by Nanny, and
guarded by himself and his kinsman, he had lost some of his apprehensions
on the subject during the three probationary days, and now took his stand
in the centre of his own party to observe the new arrivals, with something
of the security of a man who is entrenched in his own door-way.

The place they occupied, at a window of the hurricane-house, did not admit
of a view of the water; but it was sufficiently evident from the
preparations in the gangway next the land, that boats were so near as to
render that unnecessary.

"_Genus_ cockney; _species_, bagman," muttered John Effingham, as the
first arrival touched the deck. "That worthy has merely exchanged the
basket of a coach for the deck of a packet; we may now learn the price
of buttons."

It did not require a naturalist to detect the species of the stranger, in
truth; though John Effingham had been a little more minute in his
description than was warranted by the fact. The person in question was one
of those mercantile agents that England scatters so profusely over the
world, some of whom have all the most sterling qualities of their nation,
though