I was standing on the wharf at this place, watching the passengers
embarking in a steamboat which preceded that whose coming we
awaited, and participating in the anxiety with which a sergeant's
wife was collecting her few goods together - keeping one distracted
eye hard upon the porters, who were hurrying them on board, and the
other on a hoopless washing-tub for which, as being the most
utterly worthless of all her movables, she seemed to entertain
particular affection - when three or four soldiers with a recruit
came up and went on board.
The recruit was a likely young fellow enough, strongly built and
well made, but by no means sober: indeed he had all the air of a
man who had been more or less drunk for some days. He carried a
small bundle over his shoulder, slung at the end of a walking-
stick, and had a short pipe in his mouth. He was as dusty and
dirty as recruits usually are, and his shoes betokened that he had
travelled on foot some distance, but he was in a very jocose state,
and shook hands with this soldier, and clapped that one on the
back, and talked and laughed continually, like a roaring idle dog
as he was.
The soldiers rather laughed at this blade than with him: seeming
to say, as they stood straightening their canes in their hands, and
looking coolly at him over their glazed stocks, 'Go on, my boy,
while you may! you'll know better by-and-by:' when suddenly the
novice, who had been backing towards the gangway in his noisy
merriment, fell overboard before their eyes, and splashed heavily
down into the river between the vessel and the dock.
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