It Was Strange To See This Hulking Fellow Dog-Sick, And This
Delicate, Sad Woman Caring For Him.
He seemed, from first to last,
insensible of her caresses and attentions, and she seemed
unconscious of his insensibility.
The Irish husband, who sang his
wife to sleep, and this Scottish girl serving her Orson, were the
two bits of human nature that most appealed to me throughout the
voyage.
On the Thursday before we arrived, the tickets were collected; and
soon a rumour began to go round the vessel; and this girl, with her
bit of sealskin cap, became the centre of whispering and pointed
fingers. She also, it was said, was a stowaway of a sort; for she
was on board with neither ticket nor money; and the man with whom
she travelled was the father of a family, who had left wife and
children to be hers. The ship's officers discouraged the story,
which may therefore have been a story and no more; but it was
believed in the steerage, and the poor girl had to encounter many
curious eyes from that day forth.
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND REVIEW
Travel is of two kinds; and this voyage of mine across the ocean
combined both. 'Out of my country and myself I go,' sings the old
poet: and I was not only travelling out of my country in latitude
and longitude, but out of myself in diet, associates, and
consideration. Part of the interest and a great deal of the
amusement flowed, at least to me, from this novel situation in the
world.
I found that I had what they call fallen in life with absolute
success and verisimilitude. I was taken for a steerage passenger;
no one seemed surprised that I should be so; and there was nothing
but the brass plate between decks to remind me that I had once been
a gentleman. In a former book, describing a former journey, I
expressed some wonder that I could be readily and naturally taken
for a pedlar, and explained the accident by the difference of
language and manners between England and France. I must now take a
humbler view; for here I was among my own countrymen, somewhat
roughly clad to be sure, but with every advantage of speech and
manner; and I am bound to confess that I passed for nearly anything
you please except an educated gentleman. The sailors called me
'mate,' the officers addressed me as 'my man,' my comrades accepted
me without hesitation for a person of their own character and
experience, but with some curious information. One, a mason
himself, believed I was a mason; several, and among these at least
one of the seaman, judged me to be a petty officer in the American
navy; and I was so often set down for a practical engineer that at
last I had not the heart to deny it. From all these guesses I drew
one conclusion, which told against the insight of my companions.
They might be close observers in their own way, and read the
manners in the face; but it was plain that they did not extend
their observation to the hands.
To the saloon passengers also I sustained my part without a hitch.
It is true I came little in their way; but when we did encounter,
there was no recognition in their eye, although I confess I
sometimes courted it in silence. All these, my inferiors and
equals, took me, like the transformed monarch in the story, for a
mere common, human man. They gave me a hard, dead look, with the
flesh about the eye kept unrelaxed.
With the women this surprised me less, as I had already
experimented on the sex by going abroad through a suburban part of
London simply attired in a sleeve-waistcoat. The result was
curious. I then learned for the first time, and by the exhaustive
process, how much attention ladies are accustomed to bestow on all
male creatures of their own station; for, in my humble rig, each
one who went by me caused me a certain shock of surprise and a
sense of something wanting. In my normal circumstances, it
appeared every young lady must have paid me some tribute of a
glance; and though I had often not detected it when it was given, I
was well aware of its absence when it was withheld. My height
seemed to decrease with every woman who passed me, for she passed
me like a dog. This is one of my grounds for supposing that what
are called the upper classes may sometimes produce a disagreeable
impression in what are called the lower; and I wish some one would
continue my experiment, and find out exactly at what stage of
toilette a man becomes invisible to the well-regulated female eye.
Here on shipboard the matter was put to a more complete test; for,
even with the addition of speech and manner, I passed among the
ladies for precisely the average man of the steerage. It was one
afternoon that I saw this demonstrated. A very plainly dressed
woman was taken ill on deck. I think I had the luck to be present
at every sudden seizure during all the passage; and on this
occasion found myself in the place of importance, supporting the
sufferer. There was not only a large crowd immediately around us,
but a considerable knot of saloon passengers leaning over our heads
from the hurricane-deck. One of these, an elderly managing woman,
hailed me with counsels. Of course I had to reply; and as the talk
went on, I began to discover that the whole group took me for the
husband. I looked upon my new wife, poor creature, with mingled
feelings; and I must own she had not even the appearance of the
poorest class of city servant-maids, but looked more like a country
wench who should have been employed at a roadside inn.
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