For so man proposes, which it is most true And time will wait for none, nor for us too." The sea has been unusually rough all day. However, we have had a lively time of it, anyhow. We have had quite a run of visitors. The GovernorGeneral came, and we received him with a salute of nine guns. He brought his family with him. I observed that carpets were spread from the pierhead to his carriage for him to walk on, though I have seen him walk there without any carpet when he was not on business. I thought may be he had what the accidental insurance people might call an extrahazardous polish ("policy"joke, but not above mediocrity,) on his boots, and wished to protect them, but I examined and could not see that they were blacked any better than usual. It may have been that he had forgotten his carpet, before, but he did not have it with him, anyhow. He was an exceedingly pleasant old gentleman;we all liked him, especially Blucher. When he went away, Blucher invited him to come again and fetch his carpet along.
Prince Dolgorouki and a Grand Admiral or two, whom we had seen yesterday at the reception, came on board also. I was a little distant with these parties, at first, because when I have been visiting Emperors I do not like to be too familiar with people I only know by reputation, and whose moral characters and standing in society I can not be thoroughly acquainted with. I judged it best to be a little offish, at first. I said to myself, Princes and Counts and Grand Admirals are very well, but they are not Emperors, and one can not be too particular about who he associates with.
Baron Wrangel came, also. He used to be Russian Ambassador at Washington.
I told him I had an uncle who fell down a shaft and broke himself in two, as much as a year before that. That was a falsehood, but then I was not going to let any man eclipse me on surprising adventures, merely for the want of a little invention. The Baron is a fine man, and is said to stand high in the Emperor's confidence and esteem.
Baron UngernSternberg, a boisterous, wholesouled old nobleman, came with the rest. He is a man of progress and enterprise--a representative man of the age. He is the Chief Director of the railway system of Russia--a sort of railroad king. In his line he is ****** things move along in this country He has traveled extensively in America. He says he has tried convict labor on his railroads, and with perfect success. He says the convict"work well, and are quiet and peaceable. He observed that he employs nearly ten thousand of them now. This appeared to be another call on my resources.
I was equal to the emergency. I said we had eighty thousand convicts employed on the railways in America--all of them under sentence of death for murder in the first degree. That closed him out.
We had General Todtleben (the famous defender of Sebastopol, during the siege,) and many inferior army and also navy officers, and a number of unofficial Russian ladies and gentlemen. Naturally, a champagne luncheon was in order, and was accomplished without loss of life. Toasts and jokes were discharged freely, but no speeches were made save one thanking the Emperor and the Grand Duke, through the Governor-General, for our hospitable reception, and one by the GovernorGeneral in reply, in which he returned the Emperor's thanks for the speech, etc., etc.
