Europe Revised | Page 6

dream about a
scrambled egg, in which I was the egg, to find that morning had arrived
and the ship was behaving naughtily.
Here was a ship almost as long as Main Street is back home, and six
stories high, with an English basement; with restaurants and elevators
and retail stores in her; and she was as broad as a courthouse; and while
lying at the dock she had appeared to be about the most solid and
dependable thing in creation--and yet in just a few hours' time she had
altered her whole nature, and was rolling and sliding and charging and
snorting like a warhorse. It was astonishing in the extreme, and you
would not have expected it of her.

Even as I focused my mind on this phenomenon the doorway was
stealthily entered by a small man in a uniform that made him look
something like an Eton schoolboy and something like a waiter in a
dairy lunch. I was about to have the first illuminating experience with
an English manservant. This was my bedroom steward, by name
Lubly--William Lubly. My hat is off to William Lubly--to him and to
all his kind. He was always on duty; he never seemed to sleep; he was
always in a good humor, and he always thought of the very thing you
wanted just a moment or two before you thought of it yourself, and
came a-running and fetched it to you. Now he was softly stealing in to
close my port. As he screwed the round, brass-faced window fast he
glanced my way and caught my apprehensive eye.
"Good morning, sir," he said, and said it in such a way as to convey a
subtle compliment.
"Is it getting rough outside?" I said--I knew about the inside. "Thank
you," he said; "the sea 'as got up a bit, sir--thank you, sir."
I was gratified--nay more, I was flattered. And it was so delicately done
too. I really did not have the heart to tell him that I was not solely
responsible--that I had, so to speak, collaborators; but Lubly stood
ready always to accord me a proper amount of recognition for
everything that happened on that ship. Only the next day, I think it was,
I asked him where we were. This occurred on deck. He had just
answered a lady who wanted to know whether we should have good
weather on the day we landed at Fishguard and whether we should get
in on time. Without a moment's hesitation he told her; and then he
turned to me with the air of giving credit where credit is due, and said:
"Thank you, sir--we are just off the Banks, thank you."
Lubly ran true to form. The British serving classes are ever like that,
whether met with at sea or on their native soil. They are a great and a
noble institution. Give an English servant a kind word and he thanks
you. Give him a harsh word and he still thanks you. Ask a question of a
London policeman--he tells you fully and then he thanks you. Go into
an English shop and buy something--the clerk who serves you thanks
you with enthusiasm. Go in and fail to buy something--he still thanks
you, but without the enthusiasm.
One kind of Englishman says Thank you, sir; and one kind--the
Cockney who has been educated--says Thenks; but the majority brief it

into a short but expressive expletive and merely say: Kew. Kew is the
commonest word in the British Isles. Stroidinary runs it a close second,
but Kew comes first. You hear it everywhere. Hence Kew Gardens;
they are named for it.
All the types that travel on a big English-owned ship were on ours. I
take it that there is a requirement in the maritime regulations to the
effect that the set must be complete before a ship may put to sea. To
begin with, there was a member of a British legation from somewhere
going home on leave, for a holiday, or a funeral. At least I heard it was
a holiday, but I should have said he was going home for the other
occasion. He wore an Honorable attached to the front of his name and
carried several extra initials behind in the rumble; and he was filled up
with that true British reserve which a certain sort of Britisher always
develops while traveling in foreign lands. He was upward of seven feet
tall, as the crow flies, and very thin and rigid.
Viewing him, you got the impression that his framework all ran straight
up and down, like the wires in a bird cage, with barely enough perches
extending across from side to side to keep him from caving in and
crushing the canaries to death. On second thought