thereafter. The engineer, the boiler-men, the firemen, the stokers,
they all knew when the little convent girl was up in the pilot-house:
the speaking-tube became so mild and gentle.

With all the delays of river and boat, however, there is an end to the
journey from Cincinnati to New Orleans. The latter city, which at one
time to the impatient seemed at the terminus of the never, began,
all of a sudden, one day to make its nearingness felt; and from that
period every other interest paled before the interest in the immanence
of arrival into port, and the whole boat was seized with a panic of
preparation, the little convent girl with the others. Although so
immaculate was she in person and effects that she might have been
struck with a landing, as some good people might be struck with death,
at any moment without fear of results, her trunk was packed and
repacked, her satchel arranged and rearranged, and, the last day, her
hair was brushed and plaited and smoothed over and over again until
the very last glimmer of a curl disappeared. Her dress was whisked,
as if for microscopic inspection; her face was washed; and her
finger-nails were scrubbed with the hard convent nail-brush, until
the disciplined little tips ached with a pristine soreness. And still
there were hours to wait, and still the boat added up delays. But she
arrived at last, after all, with not more than the usual and expected
difference between the actual and the advertised time of arrival.

There was extra blowing and extra ringing, shouting, commanding,
rushing up the gangway and rushing down the gangway. The clerks,
sitting behind tables on the first deck, were plied, in the twinkling
of an eye, with estimates, receipts, charges, countercharges, claims,
reclaims, demands, questions, accusations, threats, all at topmost
voices. None but steamboat clerks could have stood it. And there were