In This Comparatively Humble Way Of Life He Had
Gathered A Competence, And Could Speak Of His Comfortable House,
His Hayfield, And His Garden.
On this ship, where so many
accomplished artisans were fleeing from starvation, he was present
on a pleasure trip to visit a brother in New York.
Ere he started, he informed me, he had been warned against the
steerage and the steerage fare, and recommended to bring with him a
ham and tea and a spice loaf. But he laughed to scorn such
counsels. 'I'm not afraid,' he had told his adviser; 'I'll get on
for ten days. I've not been a fisherman for nothing.' For it is
no light matter, as he reminded me, to be in an open boat, perhaps
waist-deep with herrings, day breaking with a scowl, and for miles
on every hand lee-shores, unbroken, iron-bound, surf-beat, with
only here and there an anchorage where you dare not lie, or a
harbour impossible to enter with the wind that blows. The life of
a North Sea fisher is one long chapter of exposure and hard work
and insufficient fare; and even if he makes land at some bleak
fisher port, perhaps the season is bad or his boat has been unlucky
and after fifty hours' unsleeping vigilance and toil, not a shop
will give him credit for a loaf of bread. Yet the steerage of the
emigrant ship had been too vile for the endurance of a man thus
rudely trained. He had scarce eaten since he came on board, until
the day before, when his appetite was tempted by some excellent
pea-soup. We were all much of the same mind on board, and
beginning with myself, had dined upon pea-soup not wisely but too
well; only with him the excess had been punished, perhaps because
he was weakened by former abstinence, and his first meal had
resulted in a cramp. 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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 28 of 136
Words from 13975 to 14492
of 70588
