University of Virginia Library

“SEEING THE STEAMER OFF.”

I have sometimes thought, while watching the
departure of an Eastern steamer, that the act of parting
from friends—so generally one of bitterness and
despondency—is made by an ingenious Californian
custom to yield a pleasurable excitement. This luxury
of leave-taking in which most Californians indulge,
is often protracted to the hauling in of the
gang-plank. Those last words, injunctions, promises,
and embraces, which are mournful and depressing
perhaps, in that privacy demanded on other occasions,
are here, by reason of their very publicity, of an
edifying and exhilarating character. A parting kiss
blown from the deck of a steamer into a miscellaneous
crowd, of course loses much of that sacred solemnity
with which foolish superstition is apt to invest
it. A broadside of endearing epithets, even when
properly aimed and apparently raking the whole
wharf, is apt to be impotent and harmless. A husband
who prefers to embrace his wife for the last
time at the door of her stateroom, and finds himself
the centre of an admiring group of unconcerned

spectators, of course feels himself lifted above any
feeling save that of ludicrousness which the situation
suggests. The mother, parting from her offspring,
should become a Roman matron under the like influences;
the lover who takes leave of his sweetheart,
is not apt to mar the general hilarity by any emotional
folly. In fact, this system of delaying our parting
sentiments until the last moment—this removal of
domestic scenery and incident to a public theatre—
may be said to be worthy of a stoical and democratic
people, and is an event in our lives which may be
shared with the humblest coal-passer, or itinerant
vendor of oranges. It is a return to that classic out-of-door
experience and mingling of public and domestic
economy which so ennobled the straight-nosed
Athenian.

So universal is this desire to be present at the departure
of any steamer that, aside from the regular
crowd of loungers who make their appearance confessedly
only to look on, there are others who take
advantage of the slightest intimacy to go through the
leave-taking formula. People whom you have quite
forgotten, people to whom you have been lately introduced,
suddenly and unexpectedly make their
appearance and wring your hands with fervor. The
friend, long estranged, forgives you nobly at the last
moment, to take advantage of this glorious opportunity
of “seeing you off.” Your bootmaker, tailor,
and hatter—haply with no ulterior motives and
unaccompanied by official friends—visit you with
enthusiasm. You find great difficulty in detaching

your relatives and intimates from the trunks on
which they resolutely seat themselves, up to the
moment when the paddles are moving, and you are
haunted continually by an ill-defined idea that they
may be carried off, and foisted on you—with the
payment of their passage, which, under the circumstances,
you could not refuse—for the rest of the
voyage. Acquaintances will make their appearance
at the most inopportune moments, and from the most
unexpected places—dangling from hawsers, climbing
up paddle-boxes, and crawling through cabin windows
at the imminent peril of their lives. You are
nervous and crushed by this added weight of responsibility.
Should you be a stranger, you will find any
number of people on board, who will cheerfully and
at a venture take leave of you on the slightest advances
made on your part. A friend of mine
assures me that he once parted, with great enthusiasm
and cordiality, from a party of gentlemen, to him
personally unknown, who had apparently mistaken
his state-room. This party—evidently connected
with some fire company—on comparing notes on the
wharf, being somewhat dissatisfied with the result of
their performances, afterward rendered my friend's
position on the hurricane deck one of extreme peril
and inconvenience, by reason of skillfully projected
oranges and apples, not unaccompanied with invective.

Yet there is certainly something to interest us in
the examination of that cheerless damp closet, whose
painted wooden walls no furniture or company can

make habitable, wherein our friend is to spend so
many vapid days and restless nights. The sight
of these apartments, yelept state-rooms—Heaven
knows why, except it be from their want of coziness
—is full of keen reminiscences to most Californians
who have not outgrown the memories of that dreary
interval when, in obedience to Nature's wise compensations,
homesickness was blotted out by seasickness,
and both at last resolved into a chaotic and distempered
dream, whose details we now recognize. The
steamer chair that we used to drag out upon the narrow
strip of deck and doze in, over the pages of a
well-thumbed novel; the deck itself—of afternoons,
redolent with the skins of oranges and bananas—of
mornings, damp with salt-water and mopping; the
netted bulwark, smelling of tar in the tropics, and
fretted on the windward side with little saline crystals:
the villainously compounded odors of victuals
from the pantry, and oil from the machinery; the
young lady that we used to flirt with, and with whom
we shared our last novel, adorned with marginal annotation;
our own chum; our own bore; the man
who was never sea-sick; the two events of the day,
breakfast and dinner, and the dreary interval between;
the tremendous importance given to trifling
events and trifling people; the young lady who kept
a journal; the newspaper, published on board, filled
with mild pleasantries and impertinences, elsewhere
unendurable; the young lady who sang; the wealthy
passenger; the popular passenger; the—

[Let us sit down for a moment until this qualmishness,

which such associations and some infectious
quality of the atmosphere seems to produce, has
passed away. What becomes of our steamer friends?
Why are we now so apathetic about them? Why is
it that we drift away from them so unconcernedly,
forgetting even their names and faces? Why, when
we do remember them, do we look at them so suspiciously,
with an undefined idea that, in the unrestrained
freedom of the voyage, they become possessed
of some confidence and knowledge of our weaknesses
that we never should have imparted? Did
we make any such confessions? Perish the thought.
The popular man, however, is not now so popular.
We have heard finer voices than that of the young
lady who sang so sweetly. Our chum's fascinating
qualities, somehow, have deteriorated on land; so
have those of the fair young novel-reader, now the
wife of an honest miner in Virginia City.]

—The passenger who made so many trips, and exhibited
a reckless familiarity with the officers; the
officers themselves, now so modest and undemonstrative,
a few hours later so all-powerful and important—these
are among the reminiscences of most
Californians, and these are to be remembered among
the experiences of our friend. Yet he feels as we
all do, that his past experience will be of profit to
him, and has already the confident air of an old voyager.

As you stand on the wharf again, and listen to
the cries of itinerant fruit vendors, you wonder why
it is that grief at parting and the unpleasant novelties

of travel are supposed to be assuaged by orange
and apples, even at ruinously low prices. Perhaps
it may be, figuratively, the last offering of the fruitful
earth, as the passenger commits himself to the
bosom of the sterile and unproductive ocean. Even
while the wheels are moving and the lines are cast off,
some hardy apple merchant, mounted on the top of
a pile, concludes a trade with a steerage passenger—
twenty feet interposing between buyer and seller—
and achieves, under these difficulties, the delivery of
his wares. Handkerchiefs wave, hurried orders
mingle with parting blessings, and the steamer is
“off.” As you turn your face cityward, and glance
hurriedly around at the retreating crowd, you will
see a reflection of your own wistful face in theirs,
and read the solution of one of the problems which
perplex the California enthusiast. Before you lies
San Francisco, with her hard angular outlines, her
brisk, invigorating breezes, her bright, but unsympathetic
sunshine, her restless and energetic population;
behind you fades the recollection of changeful
but honest skies; of extremes of heat and cold, modified
and made enjoyable through social and physical
laws, of pastoral landscapes, of accessible Nature in
her kindliest forms, of inherited virtues, of long-tested
customs and habits, of old friends and old
faces—of Home!