If you were I & I were you head of the 1st Congregational Church in North & South America & the islands of the Western Indies, likewise of the 1st family school, the finest family & the finest cranberry meadows, with your whims & crochets about the sea & I had to attend any important convention at Halifax in January, I confess you would not advise me to take the direct sea route by the steamer Alhambra unless there was danger of the rails being blocked by snow or unless the Alhambra had some back freight to carry or was otherwise ballasted & had a new main spencer of Mr Gilbert’s best double duck or unless the probabilities were very strong indeed of a calm. I concede this after your experience the other day in coming on here with Charlotte. That day the Alhambra was very light & the main spencer was as the mate said a first rate one & nearly new and the weather was placid & probabilities strong of zephyrs. There had to be a second table for the 1st cabin passengers that night. The next morning there was but one woman at table besides Charlotte. At noon there was but one woman & that was Charlotte but she did not stay an unnecessary length of time. At night there was out of all that ship’s company, but one man who went to the table & that one was not you, it was the captain—he went to it & went back again without sitting down. If he had sat it would not have been down in fact. You were not sick you know but you had that night & all the next day an acute prostration. Toward night from very shame—having seen no human being for 24 hours [646] or more—you reverted to your gymnastics and hung yourself out & fortunately encountered the steward & asked for the stewardess—the stewardess being reported lost, sick with the other servants, you got the steward to help you over to Charlotte’s room, and she opening the door, was on the sofa & said she was not very sick, which you felt to be impudent in one so young & not born in Nantucket. So you undertook to go back & taking a favorable weather roll succeeded in getting your fingers on the edge of the doorway to windward when the ship gave what is poetically termed a lee lurch, the plane of the cabin floor changing in a very short time from a horizontal to a vertical position, whereupon as you could not hang by your eyelids or fingerends you fell 16 feet and lay on the opposite bulkhead. Then they picked you up & gave you brandy & water & put ice on your head & you felt one bone after another & thanked God there was none broken or rebroken & did not mind the black and bluezes. Next morning the steward came & you sent him down to ask after Charlotte, & he came back & said she was not in her room—probably in the stewardesses room & went again & came again & said “No Sir, your daughter is on deck!” Which was another stunner, and an hour afterwards, the ship having taken to pitching instead of rolling, you were helped to the deck & found Charlotte there, very comfortable, but absolutely the only passenger except yourself yet out of the berths. You wrapped yourself in a blanket and lashed yourself to her and by & by got a couple of toasted biscuit & a side of salt cod & so she took her first nourishmt in—I’ve no idea how many days & nights—for though I have spoken of days—you know you may have been comatose for a week. It was bitterly cold & you had finally to persuade her with eloquence of the sea to go back to her stateroom; yet not before she had again gone forward to the revived institution of the tea table—and this morning you found yourself in Halifax did you? I congratulate you & her, and confess candidly that judging from August experience I would prefer even in September to go by rail. I fully understand why in Plymouth they adopted the statute requiring Ship Masters to substitute Halifax when they wished respectfully and in scriptural terms, to decline a proposition. I have no doubt the true translation is Halifax. And with Hebraic irony heat is substituted for the awful cold of this voyage. There must be a great deal of internal heat in sands underlying the shallow waters of Massachusetts bay if the difference is only 20° between its temperature & that of the ocean generally. I wanted a change of air from Plymouth & you got it. Once you get here—by rail—or I do—it is not so bad; very like Plymouth in fact—Easterly winds and occasional temporary cessation of rain, & the temperature I should suppose to anyone who came by the iceberg channel as you must have done very tolerable with three thicknesses of flannel and an india rubber outer suit.

Tell Mr Davis we are enjoying it by his aid. I called on Mr Menzies of the Bank of Nova Scotia & he gave me all needed assistance. The most interesting sight of the tour to us is that of three wrecked schooners & the trees & houses blown down night before last. N.B. The almost new triangular [647] “main spencer” of the Alhambra—storm trysail I should call it—was blown out of the bolt ropes.

N.B.B. Charlotte left a black lace scarf in the carriage or somewhere on the road between Holmes’ house & the station, it is supposed & it is also supposed, that you left at the stationhouse your red bag & overcoat-fortunately you had lots of underclothing and your india rubber coat and took in a small supply of brushes & things in Boston. The Alhambra is a first class see going and see sawing steamer. When you wish to make another yacht voyage in high latitudes in her, would it not be better for you to come round through Portland by rail and take her on the up trip, when she carries coal for both passages, and mackeral & grindstones & plaster & other freight, which tend to keep her bottom side down? Running this way you see she may have no freight and only coal enough to run down upon & they don’t want the trouble of ballasting her. I should think it much better to take her from Halifax, especially if it should be the winter when your convention meets, rather than go to Halifax on her.

If there is anything at all confused in this letter to your mind remember what a state of mind you must be in after such a tossing about and banging; remember above all your own sins—how often you have attempted to make me pick up & carry in your coattails that percussion capped shell of Stone’s River & reflect that I don’t every day have a chance of sending a preacher of sermons where so many of them have sent me—to Halifax.