Horace N. Pym

"Where shall we adventure, to-day that we're afloat,

Wary of the weather, and steering by a star?

Shall it be to Africa, a-steering of the boat,

To Providence, or Babylon, or off to Malabar."

—R. L. Stevenson.

The best holiday for an over-worked man, who has little time to spare, and who has not given "hostages to fortune," is to sail across the herring-pond on a Cunarder or White Star hotel, and so get free from newspapers, letters, visitors, dinner-parties, and all the daily irritations of modern life.

Those grand Atlantic rollers fill the veins with new life, the tired brain with fresh ideas; and the happy, idle days slip away all too soon, after which a short stay in New York or Boston City, and then back again.

The study of character on board is always pleasant and instructive, and sometimes a happy friendship is begun which lasts beyond the voyage.

Then, again, the cliques into which the passengers so naturally fall, is funny to watch. The reading set, who early and late occupy the best placed chairs, and wade through a vast mass of miscellaneous literature, and are only roused therefrom by the ringing summons to meals; then there is the betting and gambling set, who fill card and smoking room as long as the rules permit, coming to the surface now and then for breath, and to see what the day's run has been, or to organise fresh sweepstakes; then there is often an evangelical set, who gather in a ring upon the deck, if permitted, and sing hymns, and address in fervid tones the sinners around them; then there are the gossips (most pleasant folk these), the flirts, the deck pedestrians, those who dress three times a day, and those who dress hardly at all: and so the drama of a little world is played before a very appreciative little audience.

I remember on such a journey being greatly interested in the study of a delightful rugged old Scotch engineer, whose friendship I obtained by a genuine admiration for his devotion to his engines, and his belief in their personality. It was his habit in the evening, after a long day's run, to sit alongside these throbbing monsters and play his violin to them, upon which he was a very fair performer, saying, "They deserved cheering up a bit after such a hard day's work!" This was a real and serious sentiment on his part, and inspired respect and an amused admiration on ours.

The humours of one particular voyage which I have in my memory, were delightfully intensified by the presence on board of a very charming American child, called Flossie L——, about fourteen years old, who by her capital repartees, acute observation, and pretty face, kept her particular set of friends very much alive, and made all who knew her, her devoted slaves and admirers.

Her remark upon a preternaturally grave person, who marched the deck each day before our chairs, "that she guessed he had a lot of laughter coiled up in him somewhere," proved, before the voyage was over, to be quite true.

It was this gentleman who, one morning, solemnly confided to a friend that he was a little suspicious of the drains on board!

Americanisms, which are now every one's property, were at this time—I am speaking of twenty years ago—not so common, and glided from Flossie's pretty lips most enchantingly. To be told on a wet morning, with half a gale of wind blowing, "to put on a skin-coat and gum-boots" to meet the elements, was at that day startling, if useful, advice. She professed a serious attachment for a New York cousin, aged sixteen, "Because," she said, "he is so dissolute, plays cards, smokes cigars, reads novels, and runs away when offered candy." Her quieter moments on deck were passed in reading 'Dombey and Son,' which, when finished, she pronounced to be all wrong, "only one really nice man in the book—Carker—and he ought to have married Floey."

Mr. Hugh Childers, then First Lord of the Admiralty, was a passenger on board our boat, and having with infinite kindness and patience explained to the child our daily progress with a big chart spread on the deck and coloured pins, was somewhat startled to see her execute a pas seul over his precious map and disappear down the nearest gangway, with the remark, "My sakes, Mr. Childers, how terribly frivolous you are!"

She had a youthful brother on board, who, one day at dinner, astonished his table by coolly saying, as he pointed to a most inoffensive old lady dining opposite to him, "Steward, take away that woman, she makes me sick!"

A stout and amiable friend of Flossie's, who shall be nameless in these blameless records, on coming in sight of land assumed, and I fear did it very badly, some emotion at the first sight of her great country, only to be crushed by her immediate order, given in the sight and hearing of some hundred delighted passengers, "Sailor, give this trembling elephant an arm, I guess he's going to be sick!" Luckily for him the voyage was practically over, but for its small remnant he was known to every one on board as the trembling elephant.

One day a pleasant little American neighbour at dinner touched one's sense of humour by naÏvely saying, "If you don't remove that nasty little boiled hen in front of you, I know I must be ill."

Then there was a dull and solemn prig on board, who at every meal gave us, unasked, and apropos des bottes, some tremendous facts and statistics to digest, such as the number of shrimps eaten each year in London, or how many miles of iron tubing go to make the Saltash bridge. Finding one morning on his deck-chair, just vacated, a copy of Whitaker's Almanack and a volume of Mayhew's "London Labour and the London Poor," we recognised the source of his elucidations, and promptly consigned his precious books to a watery grave. Of that voyage, so far as he was concerned, the rest was silence.

Upon remarking to an American on board that the gentleman in question was rather slow, he brought down a Nasmyth hammer with which to crack his nut by saying, "Slow, sir; yes, he's a big bit slower than the hour hand of eternity!"

I remember on another pleasant voyage to Boston meeting and forming lasting friendship with the late Judge Abbott of that city, whose stories and conversation were alike delightful. He spoke of a rival barrister, who once before the law courts, on opening his speech for the defence of some notorious prisoner, said, "Gentlemen, I shall divide my address to you into three parts, and in the first I shall confine myself to the Facts of this case; secondly, I shall endeavour to explain the Law of this case; and finally, I shall make an all-fired rush at your passions!"

It was Judge Abbott who told me that when at the Bar he defended, and successfully, a young man charged with forging and uttering bank-notes for large values. After going fully into the case, he was entirely convinced of his client's innocence, an impression with which he succeeded in imbuing the court. After his acquittal, his client, to mark his extreme sense of gratitude to his counsel's ability, insisted upon paying him double fees. The judge's pleasure at this compliment became modified, when it soon after proved that the said fees were remitted in notes undoubtedly forged, and for the making of which he had just been tried and found "not guilty!"

Speaking one day of the general ignorance of the people one met, he very aptly quoted one of Beecher Ward's witty aphorisms, "That it is wonderful how much knowledge some people manage to steer clear of." Another quotation of his from the same ample source, I remember especially pleased me. Speaking of the morbid manner in which many dwelt persistently on the more sorrowful incidents and accidents of their lives, he said, "Don't nurse your sorrows on your knee, but spank them and put them to bed!"

On one visit to the States I took a letter of special commendation to the worthy landlord of the Parker House Hotel in Boston. On arriving I delivered my missive at the bar, was told the good gentleman was out, was duly allotted excellent rooms, and later on sat down with an English travelling companion to an equally excellent dinner in the ladies' saloon. In the middle of our repast we saw a small Jewish-looking man wending his way between the many tables in, what is literally, the marble hall, towards us. Standing beside our table, and regarding us with the benignant expression of an archbishop, he carefully, though unasked, filled and emptied a bumper of our well-iced Pommery Greno, saying, "Now, gentlemen, don't rise, but my name's Parker!"

Upon a first visit to America few things are more striking than the originality and vigour of some of the advertisements. One advocating the use of some hair-wash or cream pleased us greatly by the simple reason it gave for its purchase, "that it was both elegant and chaste." Another huge placard represented our Queen Victoria arrayed in crown, robes, and sceptre, drinking old Jacob Townsend's Sarsaparilla out of a pewter pint-pot. I also saw a most elaborate allegorical design with life-size figures, purporting to induce you to buy and try somebody's tobacco. I remember that a tall Yankee, supposed to represent Passion, was smoking the said tobacco in a very fiery and aggressive manner, that with one hand he was binding Youth and Folly together with chains, presumably for refusing him a light, whilst with the other he chucked Vice under the chin, she having apparently been more amenable and polite.

To note how customs change, I one day in New York entered a car in the Broadway, taking the last vacant seat. A few minutes, and we stopped again to admit a stout negress laden with her market purchases. The car was hot, and I was glad to yield her my seat, and stand on the cooler outside platform. She took it with a wide grin, saying with a dramatic wave of her dusky paw, "You, sir, am a gentleman, de rest am 'ogs!" a speech which would not so many years ago have probably cost her her life at the next lamppost.

A Washington doctor once told me the following little story, which seems to hold a peculiar humour of its own. A country lad and lassie, promised lovers, are in New York for a day's holiday. He takes her into one of those sugar-candy, preserved fruit, ice, and pastry shops which abound, and asks her tenderly what she'll have? She thinks she'll try a brandied peach. The waiter places a large glass cylinder holding perhaps a couple of dozen of them on their table, so that they may help themselves. These peaches, be it known, are preserved in a spirituous syrup, with the whole kernels interspersed, and are very expensive. To the horror of the young man, the girl just steadily worked her way through the whole bottleful. Having accomplished this feat without turning a hair, she pauses, when the lover, in a delicate would-be sarcastic note, asks with effusion, if she won't try another peach? To which the girl coyly answers, "No thank you, I don't like them, the seeds scratch my throat!"

As is well known, most of the waiters and servants in American hotels are Irish. Dining with a dear old Canadian friend at the Windsor Hotel in New York, we were particularly amused by the quaint look and speech of the Irish gentleman who condescended to bring us our dinner. He had a face like an unpeeled kidney potato, with twinkling merry little blue eyes. Not feeling well, I had prescribed for myself a water diet during the meal, and hoped my guest would atone for my shortcomings with the wine. After he had twice helped himself to champagne, the while I modestly sipped my seltzer, my waiter's indignation at what he supposed was nothing less than base treachery, found vent in the following stage-aside to me: "Hev an oi, sorr, on your frind, he's a-gaining on ye!"