Note 2 — LETTER XLII.

“I embarked on a little steamboat. It was elegant—it was vast. But its contents were enormously greater than its capacity. The little steamboat overflowed2 with men, women, and boys. The Commandant, a proud young man, cried, ‘Come in, come in!’ and the crowd became always more close, and one could scarcely breathe” (the heroic exhortations of the proud youth leading his public to this painful result). “All at once a delicate person3 of the piazza, feeling herself unwell, cried ‘I suffocate.’ The Commandant perceived that suffocation did veritably prevail, and gave the word of command, ‘Enough.’