THE OTHER SIDE: HOW IT STRUCK US. CHAPTER I. OUTWARD BOUND. It was a fine frosty November evening, as my friend Davis and I stood on the Prince's Pier landingstage, Greenock, waiting to embark on the steamer that was to carry us to the New World. We had bidden a temporary, though hardly reluctant, farewell to the fascinations of commerce, and were prepared to employ a six months' furlough in visiting America ;—revelling, like schoolboys released, in the prospect of a period unbroken by grim calculations of "profit and loss," and totally unshadowed by such a thing as a business letter. Half-an-hour, and we stood upon the big ship's deck, and saw the tender vanish shorewards into the night, severing by its departure the last link that connected us with the land of our birth. Then A Westward Ho! and away,-for the home of brother Jonathan ! The voyage was not remarkable: we had no startling incident of storm or peril; but the days slid by in a lazy, luxurious monotony. We paced the deck, or reclined comfortably under the lee of the deck-houses, looking out over the expanse of waters-ever the same, and yet always changing— the wave-crests curling to every swell of the breeze, and sinking again as it died; the broad bosom of the ocean now dull beneath a leaden cloudbank, now bathed in the blood-red glow of the setting sun, and giving back its splendour from the long "send" of each great Atlantic billow. But intellectual pursuits were not altogether neglected: there were books and chess in the saloon and smoking-room; and hardly an hour passed in which some industrious quartette might not be seen busy at whist; while, with a proper regard to contingencies in the land of the free to which we were bound, Davis and I endeavoured, with the able assistance of an experienced fellow-passenger, to gain some insight into "euchre " and " poker." Our companions presented considerable opportunity for the study of character. We had a gentleman from Chicago, whose stories of the Western "porkopolis" were awe-inspiring; a Scotchman from |