In fact, it was with a tender emotion that he realized
how little the world, which had changed in everything else so greatly,
had changed in its ideal of a phrase-book.
Mrs. March postponed the study of her Baedeker to the time and place for
it; and addressed herself to the immediate business of ascertaining the
respective merits of the Colmannia and Norumbia. She carried on her
researches solely among persons of her own sex; its experiences were
alone of that positive character which brings conviction, and she valued
them equally at first or second hand. She heard of ladies who would not
cross in any boat but the Colmannia, and who waited for months to get a
room on her; she talked with ladies who said that nothing would induce
them to cross in her. There were ladies who said she had twice the motion
that the Norumbia had, and the vibration from her twin screws was
frightful; it always was, on those twin-screw boats, and it did not
affect their testimony with Mrs. March that the Norumbia was a twin-screw
boat too. It was repeated to her in the third or fourth degree of
hear-say that the discipline on the Colmannia was as perfect as that on
the Cunarders; ladies whose friends had tried every line assured her that
the table of the Norumbia was almost as good as the table of the French
boats.
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