Essays of Travel | Page 3

Our party in the second cabin was not perhaps the most interesting on
board. Perhaps even in the saloon there was as much good-will and
character. Yet it had some elements of curiosity. There was a mixed
group of Swedes, Danes, and Norsemen, one of whom, generally
known by the name of 'Johnny,' in spite of his own protests, greatly
diverted us by his clever, cross-country efforts to speak English, and
became on the strength of that an universal favourite- -it takes so little
in this world of shipboard to create a popularity. There was, besides, a
Scots mason, known from his favourite dish as 'Irish Stew,' three or
four nondescript Scots, a fine young Irishman, O'Reilly, and a pair of

young men who deserve a special word of condemnation. One of them
was Scots; the other claimed to be American; admitted, after some
fencing, that he was born in England; and ultimately proved to be an
Irishman born and nurtured, but ashamed to own his country. He had a
sister on board, whom he faithfully neglected throughout the voyage,
though she was not only sick, but much his senior, and had nursed and
cared for him in childhood. In appearance he was like an imbecile
Henry the Third of France. The Scotsman, though perhaps as big an ass,
was not so dead of heart; and I have only bracketed them together
because they were fast friends, and disgraced themselves equally by
their conduct at the table.
Next, to turn to topics more agreeable, we had a newly-married couple,
devoted to each other, with a pleasant story of how they had first seen
each other years ago at a preparatory school, and that very afternoon he
had carried her books home for her. I do not know if this story will be
plain to southern readers; but to me it recalls many a school idyll, with
wrathful swains of eight and nine confronting each other stride-legs,
flushed with jealousy; for to carry home a young lady's books was both
a delicate attention and a privilege.
Then there was an old lady, or indeed I am not sure that she was as
much old as antiquated and strangely out of place, who had left her
husband, and was travelling all the way to Kansas by herself. We had to
take her own word that she was married; for it was sorely contradicted
by the testimony of her appearance. Nature seemed to have sanctified
her for the single state; even the colour of her hair was incompatible
with matrimony, and her husband, I thought, should be a man of saintly
spirit and phantasmal bodily presence. She was ill, poor thing; her soul
turned from the viands; the dirty tablecloth shocked her like an
impropriety; and the whole strength of her endeavour was bent upon
keeping her watch true to Glasgow time till she should reach New York.
They had heard reports, her husband and she, of some unwarrantable
disparity of hours between these two cities; and with a spirit
commendably scientific, had seized on this occasion to put them to the
proof. It was a good thing for the old lady; for she passed much leisure
time in studying the watch. Once, when prostrated by sickness, she let
it run down. It was inscribed on her harmless mind in letters of adamant
that the hands of a watch must never be turned backwards; and so it

behoved her to lie in wait for the exact moment ere she started it again.
When she imagined this was about due, she sought out one of the
young second-cabin Scotsmen, who was embarked on the same
experiment as herself and had hitherto been less neglectful. She was in
quest of two o'clock; and when she learned it was already seven on the
shores of Clyde, she lifted up her voice and cried 'Gravy!' I had not
heard this innocent expletive since I was a young child; and I suppose it
must have been the same with the other Scotsmen present, for we all
laughed our fill.
Last but not least, I come to my excellent friend Mr. Jones. It would be
difficult to say whether I was his right-hand man, or he mine, during
the voyage. Thus at table I carved, while he only scooped gravy; but at
our concerts, of which more anon, he was the president who called up
performers to sing, and I but his messenger who ran his errands and
pleaded privately with the over-modest. I knew I liked Mr. Jones from
the moment I saw him. I thought him by his face to be Scottish; nor
could his accent undeceive me. For as there is a lingua franca of many
tongues on the moles and in the feluccas of the Mediterranean, so