The Steam-Packet: A Tale of the River and the Ocean — page 158: what you’re looking at

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

THE STEAM PACKET, 117 their journey is one of difficulty and embarrassment at every step. They understand little of what they see—nothing of what they hear. The discomforts of habits, to which they are not accustomed, have no palli- ation by their being enabled to reason on, and draw inferences froni them. Allreally valuable sources of information are hermetically sealed against them; and their tour has nothing to compensate for its fatigue and expense, save the absurd detail of adventures to which their ignorance has exposed them. It is, indeed, with the greatest, difficulty that the comparatively few intelligent minds which travel the same road, can Tescue continental institutions, habits, and manners, from the effects of the evil impressions thus generally formed with regard to them.. _ We commenced this chapter by stating that nothing worthy of men- tion occurred during the night at Saint Omers; but we did not say that the night at Dunkirk was equally devoid of interest; for if we had made the assertion we should have recorded an untruth; and historians more veracious than ourselves do not, and cannot, possibly exist. We must therefore confess, that on the same evening which Captain Pentonville and the little detachment of Luminaries passed at Saint Omers, Mr. Pifpaf under the influence of a traveller’s curiosity and two bottles of Burgundy, sallied forth by himself, at about nine o'clock, to take a view of the town by moonlight. And first he strolled down to the port, and ascertained that the Steam- Packet was quite safe —that it had neither run away by itself, nor been run away with; and being thus satisfied that he and his companions stood no chance of being compelled to pass all their lives in Dunkirk, for want of means to get out of it again, he returned into the town. The moonlight, he thought (and he wished Aramintha had been there to see it), looked very beautiful upon the water; and it now appeared equally charming upon the pantiles of the houses. The lamps, which were suspended by cords in the middle of the streets, at long intervals, did not much in- terfere with the monopoly of the moonlight—certainly not to an extent to infringe its patent; and at that period the good people of Dunkirk had not been enlightened. by the introduction of gas companies. Well, Mr. Pifpaf walked on; and at. length he came to a building which looked very much like a theatre. Indeed it was a theatre, and it was open too. Mr. Pifpaf was quite enchanted at the prospect of amuse- ment thus held out to him’; and having paid the admission fee, he was forthwith conducted to a comfortable seat which commanded a full view of the house. Mr. Pifpaf was certainly very far from compre- hending the speeches made by the actors and actresses ; but he kindly and considerately took it for granted that they were very fine; and he ‘was quite competent, moreover, to judge of the dancing in the ballet, ‘EOmIchbooks (E(0)