The Waiter Came Round, And The Unhappy Man, In Confident But
Mellifluous Tones, Pointing To The Bread, Asked For "My Donkeys."
Comic drinking-songs, and satires on the English, the latter to the tune
of 'Yankee Doodle,' were sung in
The saloon in the evenings round large
bowls of punch, and had the effect of keeping many of the ladies on deck,
when a refuge from the cold and spray would have been desirable; but with
this exception the conduct of the passengers on the whole was marked by
far more propriety than could have been expected from so mixed a company.
If the captain had been more of a disciplinarian, even this annoyance
might have been avoided.
I had the misfortune of having for my companion in my state-room an
Englishwoman who had resided for some years at New York, and who combined
in herself the disagreeable qualities of both nations. She was in a
frequent state of intoxication, and kept gin, brandy, and beer in her
berth. Whether sober or not, she was equally voluble; and as her language
was not only inelegant, but replete with coarseness and profanity, the
annoyance was almost insupportable. She was a professed atheist, and as
such justly an object of commiseration, the weakness of her unbelief being
clearly manifested by the frequency with which she denied the existence of
a God.
On one day, as I was reading my Bible, she exclaimed with a profane
expression, "I wish you'd pitch that book overboard, it's enough to sink
the ship;" the contradiction implied in the words showing the weakness of
her atheism, which, while it promises a man the impunity of non-existence,
and degrades him to desire it, very frequently seduces him to live as an
infidel, but to die a terrified and despairing believer.
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