CHARLES DICKENS,

“I shall never forget the one-fourth serious and three-fourths comical astonishment, with which, on the morning of the third of January eighteenhundred-and-forty-two, I opened the door of, and put my head into, a `state-room' on board the Britannia steam-packet, twelve hundred tons burthen per register, bound for Halifax and Boston, and carrying Her Majesty's mails.” American Notes (1842)