is a scene of embracing, kissing, laugliing, and crying,
impossible to describe.
The passengers land and make their way to the ho- tels, when they luxuriate in a comfortable room, bath, and a table from which food once more seems palata- ble ; clothes are taken from the trunk and put on, the creases in which mark the wearer as a new comer. Meanwhile lines begin to form at the post-office win- dows, although it may be twelve or twenty hours be- fore the mails are ready for delivery. Thither con- gregate the anxiously expectant, the husband and father hungry for news from home, the lover with soft eyes and flushed cheek and tingling nerves, and in whose breast angels and imps alternately beat their tatoo as he waits to learn his fate ; the rough miner, the merchant's clerk, the mechanic. Ah ! never were letters so longed for or so prized. Alone in that mot- ley crowd, for months without one word from home, the heart steeled to the world around them, deadened in that social Sahara, here was the only solace for heart-sickness, the only sustenance the soul would have perhaps for months to come.
Rapidly the lines lengthen, until perhaps five hun- dred persons are gathered there, having the appearance at ^ii distance of a mob, but with the utmost order and regularity, each new-comer taking his place behind the last before him. There is no respect of persons, no crowding or jostling ; any attempt at unfairness is speedily put down by the omnipotent majority. The ragamuffin, who everyone knew never wrote or re- ceived a letter in his life, might take his stand beside the millionaire, and sell his place as opportunity ofTered, when near the window, to some one whose time was more valuable than money, which he frequently did for five, or ten, or twenty dollars. Some bring their stools and while away the time reading, smoking, and chewing. Eastern papers are sold by the newsboys, peripatetic cafes and liquor saloons walk about on French le^rs, and hand-cart hotels are rolled along the
