The Freemason's Daughter: A Novel — page 290: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE FREEMASONS DAUGHTER. 283 sons and daughters would be there to meet her—the mother’s heart felt not of the troubles of the voyage. _The young and trusting—the sturdy yeoman and his bride—hopeful youth, and innocent, wondering child- hood, too, were there, listening to tales of the strange land to be their future home—fields to be purchased at a few shillings an acre, to be their own, untaxed, un- tithed. Oh, how they promised themselves to toil and persevere. Even the broken labourer, sent out at the expense of the parish—the man who had reached the midway stage of life—felt a return of that hope which had for so many years been a stranger to his breast. In America, ‘his having been a pauper—a thing numbered in the parish books—would be unknown, or, if known, none would despise him for it. In America, too, he might share, though late, in the inheritance of the earth. America promised to his industry fields while living—something he could call his own and bequeath to his children; England, toil as he would, proffered but six feet of her aristocratic soil, and not even that till he was dead. Nor were the idle, the crime-stained, the worthless, and the desperate, wanting in that brave ship. Amongst the cabin passengers was a tall, sickly, rakish-looking youth, whose cheek would blanch whenever a sail appeared in the horizon. He feared pursutt, perhaps. To his terrified impatience the ship, although sailing at the rate of ten or twelve knots an hour, crept with a COniiclooecl SS (SO