The Complete Writings, vol 2 | Page 5

door is like lifting up a trap-door in
the floor; to deliberately start for some object, and, before you know it,
to be flung against it like a bag of sand; to attempt to sit down on your
sofa, and find you are sitting up; to slip and slide and grasp at
everything within reach, and to meet everybody leaning and walking on
a slant, as if a heavy wind were blowing, and the laws of gravitation
were reversed; to lie in your berth, and hear all the dishes on the
cabin-table go sousing off against the wall in a general smash; to sit at
table holding your soup-plate with one hand, and watching for a chance
to put your spoon in when it comes high tide on your side of the dish;
to vigilantly watch, the lurch of the heavy dishes while holding your
glass and your plate and your knife and fork, and not to notice it when
Brown, who sits next you, gets the whole swash of the gravy from the
roast-beef dish on his light-colored pantaloons, and see the look of
dismay that only Brown can assume on such an occasion; to see Mrs.
Brown advance to the table, suddenly stop and hesitate, two waiters
rush at her, with whom she struggles wildly, only to go down in a heap
with them in the opposite corner; to see her partially recover, but only
to shoot back again through her state-room door, and be seen no
more;--all this is quite pleasant and refreshing if you are tired of land,
but you get quite enough of it in a couple of weeks. You become, in
time, even a little tired of the Jew who goes about wishing "he vas a
veek older;" and the eccentric man, who looks at no one, and streaks
about the cabin and on deck, without any purpose, and plays
shuffle-board alone, always beating himself, and goes on the deck
occasionally through the sky-light instead of by the cabin door, washes
himself at the salt-water pump, and won't sleep in his state-room,
saying he is n't used to sleeping in a bed,--as if the hard narrow, uneasy
shelf of a berth was anything like a bed!--and you have heard at last
pretty nearly all about the officers, and their twenty and thirty years of
sea-life, and every ocean and port on the habitable globe where they
have been. There comes a day when you are quite ready for land, and
the scream of the "gull" is a welcome sound.
Even the sailors lose the vivacity of the first of the voyage. The first

two or three days we had their quaint and half-doleful singing in chorus
as they pulled at the ropes: now they are satisfied with short ha-ho's,
and uncadenced grunts. It used to be that the leader sang, in
ever-varying lines of nonsense, and the chorus struck in with fine effect,
like this:
"I wish I was in Liverpool town. Handy-pan, handy O!
O captain! where 'd you ship your crew Handy-pan, handy O!
Oh! pull away, my bully crew, Handy-pan, handy O!"
There are verses enough of this sort to reach across the Atlantic; and
they are not the worst thing about it either, or the most tedious. One
learns to respect this ocean, but not to love it; and he leaves it with
mingled feelings about Columbus.
And now, having crossed it,--a fact that cannot be concealed,--let us not
be under the misapprehension that we are set to any task other than that
of sauntering where it pleases us.

PARIS AND LONDON
SURFACE CONTRASTS OF PARIS AND LONDON
I wonder if it is the Channel? Almost everything is laid to the Channel:
it has no friends. The sailors call it the nastiest bit of water in the world.
All travelers anathematize it. I have now crossed it three times in
different places, by long routes and short ones, and have always found
it as comfortable as any sailing anywhere, sailing being one of the most
tedious and disagreeable inventions of a fallen race. But such is not the
usual experience: most people would make great sacrifices to avoid the
hour and three quarters in one of those loathsome little Channel
boats,--they always call them loathsome, though I did n't see but they
are as good as any boats. I have never found any boat that hasn't a
detestable habit of bobbing round. The Channel is hated: and no one
who has much to do with it is surprised at the projects for bridging it
and for boring a hole under it; though I have scarcely ever met an
Englishman who wants either done,--he does not desire any more facile
communication with the French than now exists. The traditional hatred
may