Two such loving women as they were were not long in
building up a language, especially as my mother had
learned from my father and his friends, in her early
life, some of the common words of German--what she called
a bread-and-butter German. For our new inmate was a
Swedish girl. Her story, in short, was this:--
She had been in New York but two days. On the voyage
over, they had had some terrible sickness on the vessel,
and the poor child's mother had died very suddenly and
had been buried in the sea. Her father had died long
before.
This was, as you may think, a terrible shock to her.
But she had hoped and hoped for the voyage to come to an
end, because there was a certain brother of hers in
America whom they were to meet at their landing, and
though she was very lonely on the packet-ship, in which
she and her mother and a certain family of the name of
Hantsen--of whom she had much to say--were the only
Swedes, still she expected to find the brother almost as
soon, as I may say, as they saw the land.
She felt badly enough that he did not come on board
with the quarantine officer. When the passengers were
brought to Castle Garden, and no brother came, she felt
worse. However, with the help of the clerks there, she
got off a letter to him, somewhere in Jersey, and
proposed to wait as long as they would let her, till he
should come.
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