This Tuesday morning we were all delighted with the
change of weather, and in the highest possible spirits.
We got in a cluster like bees, sitting between each
other’s feet under lee of the deck-houses.
Stories and laughter went around. The children
climbed about the shrouds. White faces appeared
for the first time, and began to take on colour from
the wind. I was kept hard at work making cigarettes
for one amateur after another, and my less than moderate
skill was heartily admired. Lastly, down sat
the fiddler in our midst and began to discourse his
reels, and jigs, and ballads, with now and then a
voice or two to take up the air and throw in the interest
of human speech.
Through this merry and good-hearted scene there came
three cabin passengers, a gentleman and two young
ladies, picking their way with little gracious titters
of indulgence, and a Lady-Bountiful air about nothing,
which galled me to the quick. I have little of
the radical in social questions, and have always nourished
an idea that one person was as good as another.
But I began to be troubled by this episode.
It was astonishing what insults these people managed
to convey by their presence. They seemed to throw
their clothes in our faces. Their eyes searched
us all over for tatters and incongruities. A
laugh was ready at their lips; but they were too well-mannered
to indulge it in our hearing. Wait a bit, till
they were all back in the saloon, and then hear how
wittily they would depict the manners of the steerage.
We were in truth very innocently, cheerfully, and
sensibly engaged, and there was no shadow of excuse
for the swaying elegant superiority with which these
damsels passed among us, or for the stiff and waggish
glances of their squire. Not a word was said;
only when they were gone Mackay sullenly damned their
impudence under his breath; but we were all conscious
of an icy influence and a dead break in the course
of our enjoyment.
STEERAGE TYPES
We had a fellow on board, an Irish-American, for all
the world like a beggar in a print by Callot; one-eyed,
with great, splay crow’s-feet round the sockets;
a knotty squab nose coming down over his moustache;
a miraculous hat; a shirt that had been white, ay,
ages long ago; an alpaca coat in its last sleeves;
and, without hyperbole, no buttons to his trousers.
Even in these rags and tatters, the man twinkled
all over with impudence like a piece of sham jewellery;
and I have heard him offer a situation to one of his
fellow-passengers with the air of a lord. Nothing
could overlie such a fellow; a kind of base success
was written on his brow. He was then in his
ill days; but I can imagine him in Congress with his
mouth full of bombast and sawder. As we moved
in the same circle, I was brought necessarily into
his society. I do not think I ever heard him
say anything that was true, kind, or interesting;
but there was entertainment in the man’s demeanour.
You might call him a half-educated Irish Tigg.
