 of pickled fixings.
    It would be difficult to give an adequate idea of Mrs. Hominy's freshness
next day, or of the avidity with which she went headlong into moral philosophy
at breakfast. Some little additional degree of asperity, perhaps, was visible in
her features, but not more than the pickles would have naturally produced. All
that day she clung to Martin. She sat beside him while he received his friends
(for there was another Reception, yet more numerous than the former), propounded
theories, and answered imaginary objections, so that Martin really began to
think he must be dreaming, and speaking for two; she quoted interminable
passages from certain essays on government, written by herself; used the Major's
pocket-handkerchief as if the snuffle were a temporary malady, of which she was
determined to rid herself by some means or other; and, in short, was such a
remarkable companion, that Martin quite settled it between himself and his
conscience, that in any new settlement it would be absolutely necessary to have
such a person knocked on the head for the general peace of society.
    In the meantime Mark was busy, from early in the morning until late at
night, in getting on board the steamboat such provisions, tools, and other
necessaries, as they had been forewarned it would be wise to take. The purchase
of these things, and the settlement of their bill at the National, reduced their
finances to so low an ebb, that if the captain had delayed his departure any
longer, they would have been in almost as bad a plight as the unfortunate poorer
emigrants, who (seduced on board by solemn advertisement) had been living on the
lower deck a whole week, and exhausting their miserable stock of provisions
before the voyage commenced. There they were, all huddled together, with the
engine and the fires. Farmers who had never seen a plough; woodmen who had never
used an axe; builders who couldn't make a box; cast out of their own land, with
not a hand to aid them: newly come into an unknown world, children in
helplessness, but men in wants, with younger children at their backs, to live or
die as it might happen!
    The morning came, and they would start at noon. Noon came, and they would
start at night. But nothing is eternal in this world: not even the
procrastination of an American skipper: and at night all was ready.
    Dispirited and weary to the last degree, but a greater lion than ever (he
had done nothing all the afternoon but answer letters from
