The colonel being again left alone with Martin, checked
him as he was moving away, and offered in consideration of his being an
Englishman, to show him the town and to introduce him, if such were his
desire, to a genteel boarding-house. But before they entered on these
proceedings (he said), he would beseech the honour of his company at the
office of the Rowdy Journal, to partake of a bottle of champagne of his
own importation.
All this was so extremely kind and hospitable, that Martin, though it
was quite early in the morning, readily acquiesced. So, instructing
Mark, who was deeply engaged with his friend and her three children,
that when he had done assisting them, and had cleared the baggage,
he was to wait for further orders at the Rowdy Journal Office, Martin
accompanied his new friend on shore.
They made their way as they best could through the melancholy crowd of
emigrants upon the wharf, who, grouped about their beds and boxes, with
the bare ground below them and the bare sky above, might have fallen
from another planet, for anything they knew of the country; and walked
for some short distance along a busy street, bounded on one side by the
quays and shipping; and on the other by a long row of staring red-brick
storehouses and offices, ornamented with more black boards and white
letters, and more white boards and black letters, than Martin had ever
seen before, in fifty times the space.
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