He Had Determined To Live Henceforth On
Biscuit; And When, Two Months Later, He Should Return To England,
To Make The Passage By Saloon.
The second cabin, after due
inquiry, he scouted as another edition of the steerage.
He spoke apologetically of his emotion when ill. 'Ye see, I had no
call to be here,' said he; 'and I thought it was by with me last
night. I've a good house at home, and plenty to nurse me, and I
had no real call to leave them.' Speaking of the attentions he had
received from his shipmates generally, 'they were all so kind,' he
said, 'that there's none to mention.' And except in so far as I
might share in this, he troubled me with no reference to my
services.
But what affected me in the most lively manner was the wealth of
this day-labourer, paying a two months' pleasure visit to the
States, and preparing to return in the saloon, and the new
testimony rendered by his story, not so much to the horrors of the
steerage as to the habitual comfort of the working classes. One
foggy, frosty December evening, I encountered on Liberton Hill,
near Edinburgh, an Irish labourer trudging homeward from the
fields. Our roads lay together, and it was natural that we should
fall into talk. He was covered with mud; an inoffensive, ignorant
creature, who thought the Atlantic Cable was a secret contrivance
of the masters the better to oppress labouring mankind; and I
confess I was astonished to learn that he had nearly three hundred
pounds in the bank. But this man had travelled over most of the
world, and enjoyed wonderful opportunities on some American
railroad, with two dollars a shift and double pay on Sunday and at
night; whereas my fellow-passenger had never quitted Tyneside, and
had made all that he possessed in that same accursed, down-falling
England, whence skilled mechanics, engineers, millwrights, and
carpenters were fleeing as from the native country of starvation.
Fitly enough, we slid off on the subject of strikes and wages and
hard times. Being from the Tyne, and a man who had gained and lost
in his own pocket by these fluctuations, he had much to say, and
held strong opinions on the subject. He spoke sharply of the
masters, and, when I led him on, of the men also. The masters had
been selfish and obstructive, the men selfish, silly, and light-
headed. He rehearsed to me the course of a meeting at which he had
been present, and the somewhat long discourse which he had there
pronounced, calling into question the wisdom and even the good
faith of the Union delegates; and although he had escaped himself
through flush times and starvation times with a handsomely provided
purse, he had so little faith in either man or master, and so
profound a terror for the unerring Nemesis of mercantile affairs,
that he could think of no hope for our country outside of a sudden
and complete political subversion. Down must go Lords and Church
and Army; and capital, by some happy direction, must change hands
from worse to better, or England stood condemned. Such principles,
he said, were growing 'like a seed.'
From this mild, soft, domestic man, these words sounded unusually
ominous and grave. I had heard enough revolutionary talk among my
workmen fellow-passengers; but most of it was hot and turgid, and
fell discredited from the lips of unsuccessful men. This man was
calm; he had attained prosperity and ease; he disapproved the
policy which had been pursued by labour in the past; and yet this
was his panacea, - to rend the old country from end to end, and from
top to bottom, and in clamour and civil discord remodel it with the
hand of violence.
THE STOWAWAYS
On the Sunday, among a party of men who were talking in our
companion, Steerage No. 2 and 3, we remarked a new figure. He wore
tweed clothes, well enough made if not very fresh, and a plain
smoking-cap. His face was pale, with pale eyes, and spiritedly
enough designed; but though not yet thirty, a sort of blackguardly
degeneration had already overtaken his features. The fine nose had
grown fleshy towards the point, the pale eyes were sunk in fat.
His hands were strong and elegant; his experience of life evidently
varied; his speech full of pith and verve; his manners forward, but
perfectly presentable. The lad who helped in the second cabin told
me, in answer to a question, that he did not know who he was, but
thought, 'by his way of speaking, and because he was so polite,
that he was some one from the saloon.'
I was not so sure, for to me there was something equivocal in his
air and bearing. He might have been, I thought, the son of some
good family who had fallen early into dissipation and run from
home. But, making every allowance, how admirable was his talk! I
wish you could have heard hin, tell his own stories. They were so
swingingly set forth, in such dramatic language, and illustrated
here and there by such luminous bits of acting, that they could
only lose in any reproduction. There were tales of the P. and O.
Company, where he had been an officer; of the East Indies, where in
former years he had lived lavishly; of the Royal Engineers, where
he had served for a period; and of a dozen other sides of life,
each introducing some vigorous thumb-nail portrait. He had the
talk to himself that night, we were all so glad to listen. The
best talkers usually address themselves to some particular society;
there they are kings, elsewhere camp-followers, as a man may know
Russian and yet be ignorant of Spanish; but this fellow had a
frank, headlong power of style, and a broad, human choice of
subject, that would have turned any circle in the world into a
circle of hearers.
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