Elegant stores, too, has Baltimore; and in them all the little last new feminine dodges in the way of adornment, so that no Baltimore husband need heed his wife's prayer to go to New York to see what is the last new fashion in gloves, boots, silks, laces, bonnets, or--hair. Baltimore wives may not thank me for this, but I am not afraid; for I can truly say that their faces were so bright that sunny day, as they nodded smilingly to one another, that I trembled for the wide-spread fame of New York beauties. Little loves of children too, I saw, with their sable nurses; oh! how I like the sable nurses. No _French_ caps _shamming_ it over _Celtic_ faces; but instead, the jolly African physiognomy, framed in its gay turban; and, best of all--forgive me, fair Baltimore!--_receiving_ as well as _earning_ a nurse's wages.
I always feel as if a coroner's inquest would be held over me, when I cross a steamboat gangway, even though there may be blue sky overhead, and sunshine about me.
Judge, then, of my consternation, as the Baltimore boat pushed off for Norfolk, Va., and I discovered directly beneath my state-room window about a dozen barrels of _kerosene_. In vain did the philosopher try to bamboozle me into the belief that "it was lard." After fifteen years conjugal acquaintance with my nose, it was a stupidity of which only a man could be guilty.
"Lard!" I exclaimed; "it is kerosene! and a military company on board too." Now I _don't_ "love the military." I had one fearful experience with them, on board the ill-fated Lady Elgin, when, in the midst of a howling tempest, with thunder and lightning thrown in, their tipsy howls made a perfect pandemonium.
Military companies smoke too; and there is always fire where there is smoke, says the old proverb; and sparks and kerosene are things better divorced. So I didn't undress that night, and had plenty of time to consider a question which for the first time I asked myself,--whether a steamboat ought not, in a case like this, to forfeit its insurance. That part of my education having been neglected at boarding-school, I was unable to solve it; so I shudderingly recognized the fact, that men on the upper deck were smoking pipes, and knocking ashes and sparks from the railing with a verdant innocence and stupidity quite astounding.