You will have to let me off with saying that Aristides was
everything that I believed he would be and was never really afraid he
might not be. From the moment we caught sight of each other at Plymouth,
he at the rail of the steamer and I on the deck of the tender, we were as
completely one as we are now. I never could tell how I got aboard to him;
whether he came down and brought me, or whether I was simply rapt through
the air to his side. It would have been embarrassing if we had not
treated the situation frankly; but such odd things happen among the
English going out to their different colonies that our marriage, by a
missionary returning to his station, was not even a nine days' wonder
with our fellow-passengers.
We were a good deal more than nine days on the steamer before we could
get a vessel that would take us on to Altruria; but we overhauled a ship
going there for provisions at last, and we were all put off on her, bag
and baggage, with three cheers from the friends we were leaving; I think
they thought we were going to some of the British islands that the
Pacific is full of.
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