waters;
The Purser died by swallowin' gas,
Thus windin' up these matters.
L'Envoi
Fate's relentless finger,
Points to the Purser's doom:
He gulped the seltzer quickly—
Then bust with an air-tight boom!
Taking my cue from this short, spasmodic dream I had one evening in a steamer chair, of what I imagined was to happen on our coming voyage, I started to scribble; and following the fantastic idea in the vision, I shall adopt the abbreviated name of The Cork, for our good ship—although some of the passengers preferred to call her The Corker, as she was big and fine, and justly celebrated among those who go down to the sea in fear and trembling. The fame of this ship and her captain spread so far and wide that a worthy band of male and female pilgrims besought him to take them to foreign parts, for a consideration.
There was great ado at starting, and when we finally steamed out of New York harbor past the "Goddess of Liberty" one fine morning, the air was rent with the screeching of steam sirens and the tooting of whistles. The "Goddess" stood calm and silent on her pedestal; she looked virtuous (which was natural to her, being made of metal), but her stoic indifference was somewhat upset by an icy stalactite that hung from her classic nose. One of the passengers remarked that Bartholdi ought to have supplied her with a handkerchief, but this suggestion was considered flippant by his Philistine audience, and it made no impression whatever.
The list of passengers stood at seven hundred, and an extensive programme of entertainments was promoted for their amusement, consisting of balls, lectures, glees, games of bridge whist and progressive euchre, concerts, readings, and a bewildering schedule of functions, too numerous to mention; in fact, it was a case of three rings under one tent and a dozen side shows.
The passenger list comprised many examples of eccentric characters, rarely found outside of the pages of Dickens; the majority, however, were very interesting and refined people, and the exceptional types only served to accentuate the desirability and variety of their companionship on a voyage of this character. Here is a description of some of them, exaggerated perhaps in places, but not far from the facts when the peculiar conditions surrounding them are fully considered. Many of them were doing their best to attract attention in a harmless way, and in most cases they succeeded, as there is really nothing so immaterial that it escapes all notice from our fellows.
For instance, there was a human skyscraper, a giant, who had an immense pyramid of tousled hair—a Matterhorn of curls and pomatum—who gloried in its possession and scorned to wear hat, bonnet or cap. When it rained he went out to enjoy a good wetting, and came back a dripping bear. The sight made those of us who had but little hair atop our pates green with envy, as all we could now hope for was not hair but that the shellac finish on our polls might be dull and not shiny. This man also sat or stood in the sun by the hour to acquire that brick-red tan that is "quite English, you know;" and he got it, but it did not altogether match with the other coloring which nature had bestowed upon him. Then we had a "fidgetarian," who was one of the unlaundered ironies of life; he could not keep still for a moment. This specimen was from Throgg's Neck, and danced the carmagnole in concentric circles all by himself, twisting in and out between the waltzers evidently with the feeling that he was the "whole show," and that the other dancers were merely accessories to the draught he made, and followed in his wake. He was a half portion in the gold-filled class, and a charter member of the Forty-second Street Country Club.
We were also honored by the presence of Mrs. Handy Jay Andy, of Alexandry, who had "stunted considerable" in Europe, and was anxious to repeat the performance in the Levant. She didn't carry a pug dog, but she thought a "lady" ought to tote round with her something in captivity, so she compromised on a canary, which she bought in Smyrna, where all the good figs come from. She was a colored supplement to high-toned marine society.
No collection of this kind would be complete without a military officer, and we had him all right; we called him "the General," a man who jested at scars and who had a beard out of which a Pullman pillow might be easily constructed. On gala nights he decorated himself with medals, and on the whole was a very ornamental piece of human bric-à-brac. Of course we had the man with the green—but not too French green—hat. He had a curly duck's tail, dyed green, sticking up in its rear, so that the view from the back would resemble Emperor William. He attracted attention, but somehow seemed like an empty green bottle thrown in the surf.
Some of the ladies had their little peculiarities also. There was Mrs. Galley-West from North Fifth Avenue, New York, a "widow-lady," whose name went up on the social electric-light sign when she began to ride home in a limousine. She stated that everybody who was anybody in that great city knew who she was and all about her. Nobody disputed her statements. As time elapsed she became very confidential, and one day stated that she was matrimonially inclined and intimated that she would welcome an introduction to an aged millionaire in delicate health, as it might result in her being able to carry out some ambitious plans she had made in "philomathy." By the time we reached Cairo she had lowered her figures to a very modest amount—but she is still a widow.
The human mushroom was also in evidence—the girl narrow and straight up-and-down, like a tube ending in a fishtail, with a Paquin wrap and a Virot hat, reinforced with a steel net wire neck-band—the very latest fads from Paris. Her gowns were grand, her hats were great, I tell you! When some one was warbling at the piano, she would put her elbow on the lid of the "baby grand," face the audience, and strike a stained-glass attitude that would make Raphael's cartoons look like subway posters.
FUNCHAL THE LONG BRANCH OF MADEIRA; NICE BALMY PLACE FOR A REST AFTER A PANIC. STEAMER LEAVES LONDON TWICE A WEEK. HOTEL ACCOMMODATIONS BY CABLE
Among those present who came all the way from Medicine Hat was the cowboy girl, who could ride a mustang, toss a steer with a lariat, shoot a bear or climb a tree. She wore a sombrero, rolled up her sleeves, and was just dying to show what she could do if she had only half a chance. She got it when we came to the donkey rides in Egypt. She was a "Dreadnaught girl," sure enough.
The claims of the pocket "Venus" from the "Soo," must not be forgotten. She was small and of the reversible, air-cooled, selective type, but as perfect as anything ever seen in a glass case. She wore a spray of soft-shell crab-apple blossoms in her hair, which stamped her with the bloom of Arcady. She spilled her chatter lavishly, and had the small change of conversation right at her finger-tips. She had an early-English look, and was deservedly popular with the boys.
The beet-sugar man from Colorado also had his place. This specialist put his table to sleep before we lost sight of land. He stifled his listeners with sugar statistics, informing them how many tons of beets the State produced and what they were worth in money; how much to expect from an acre, and the risks and profits of the industry: a collection of facts that were the mythology of alleged truth. If you were good the gods would make you a sugar-king in the world to come, and Colorado was to be financially sugar-cured in the sweet by-and-by. His whole song was a powerful anaesthetic, and many at the table did not know the meal was over till the steward woke them up.
One among our crowd who really mattered was a tall, gloomy, dyspeptic man, hard to approach, but once known he never failed to harp on his favorite string—the old masters and the Barbizon school of painting. This man had all the ready veneer of the art connoisseur. He used to talk by the hour about the great pictures he had seen, and gave each artist a descriptive niche for what he thought him famous: such as, the expression of Rubens; the grace of Raphael; the purity of Domenichino; the correggiosity of Correggio; the learning of Poussin; the air of Guido; the taste of Coraceis, and the drawing of Michelangelo. This, of course, was all Greek to most of us, but it raised the tone of the smoking-room