CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Joseph Whitmore Barry 
 dramatic library 
 
 the gift of 
 
 two friends 
 
 of Cornell University 
 
 [ 934 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PN 6161.C67 
 
 Great wet wa 
 
 3 1924 027 250 996 
 
The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027250996 
 
THE GREAT WET WAY 
 
"The happy traveller bursts into tears" 
 
The Great Wet Way 
 
 By 
 
 Alan Dale /a^k^/ 
 
 
 Illustrated by 
 
 H. B. Martin 
 
 New York 
 
 Dodd, Mead and Company 
 
 1909 
 
Copyright, 1909, by 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 
 Published, March, zgog 
 
To My Daughter 
 DAISY 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTEB PACE 
 
 I The Queer Things We See .... i 
 
 II The Room-mate 22 
 
 III Partaking of Nourishment .... 43 
 
 IV Who's Who on Board 63 
 
 V Mal de Mer 85 
 
 VI Children on Board 106 
 
 VII Flirtations 130 
 
 VIII Patriotism 152 
 
 IX Tipping 174 
 
 X Nervous Passengers 197 
 
 XI The Concert 219 
 
 XII The Custom House 242 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 " The Happy Traveller Bursts into Tears " 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 " You Find a Dozen People Standing Behind 
 
 You" 18 
 
 " It Seemed Like a Dense Crowd in the Sub- 
 way "....... 30 
 
 " ' I Tell You, Old Chap, You Miss Green Corn 
 
 in London and Paris ' " . . .46 
 " People Got Up, and Walked Past Them " . 70 
 " He Has Crossed the Atlantic Forty-four 
 
 Times" 90 
 
 " Father and Mother See That She is Flirt- 
 ing" 136 
 
 " The Tinsel Patriot " 168 
 
 " ' Oh, That We Two Were Maying '" . . 226 
 " Appears to Have Taken a Great Fancy to the 
 
 Custom House Inspector "... 254 
 
APOLOGETICALLY 
 
 Once upon a time, many, many years ago, the man 
 who " went to Europe " was looked upon as some- 
 what remarkable, and even heroic. Shoals of news- 
 paper reporters met the incoming steamers, and eag- 
 erly interviewed the intrepid travellers, asking them 
 all sorts of leading questions, and chronicling the 
 answers with avid accuracy. 
 
 Tempora mutantur. To-day, everybody goes to 
 Europe. The steamers are crowded, as for a picnic. 
 The townships and the villages of the far west sup- 
 ply a goodly percentage of the passengers. It is 
 neither remarkable nor heroic to go to Europe to-day. 
 In fact, it is rather provincial. Exclusive people even 
 hesitate before admitting that they are going abroad. 
 They select a time that is unpopular with the mass of 
 tourists, and satisfy their consciences in that way. 
 Newspaper reporters no longer flock to meet the in- 
 coming steamers. It would keep them too busy. 
 Moreover, the views of Tom, Dick, and Harry are 
 not startling. 
 
 The trip to Europe, however, with its characteris- 
 tics of to-day, is vastly amusing to those blessed or 
 cursed with a sense of humour. The close association, 
 the enforced intimacy with what the English call 
 
Apologetically 
 
 h trippers " and what we call " tourists," must be 
 strenuously interesting to those who enjoy the study 
 of human nature. 
 
 This book is not serious. It is the result of some 
 fifty trips across the Atlantic, on all kinds of steamers, 
 and with all sorts of people. I have tried to discuss 
 every conceivable phase of life on the big liner, which 
 some travellers consider a lost week, and which I 
 regard as a seven days' joy; in fact, a picnic. My ob- 
 ject has been simply to amuse those who have crossed, 
 those who will cross, and the friends of those who 
 have crossed and who will cross. This is a " tall 
 order," don't you think? This is an appeal to a tre- 
 mendous public. It is, in fact, an overwhelming 
 appeal. Nor must I forget the members of the 
 various steamship companies. 
 
 If their sense of humour responds, then indeed 
 shall I consider myself amply repaid. 
 
 Alan Dale. 
 
 New York, 1909. 
 
THE QUEER THINGS WE SEE 
 
 H ! " you sigh, in ex- 
 quisite relief, as the 
 steamer slowly sails from 
 port, and you see the 
 last of everything and 
 everybody, "now for a 
 week of delightfully re- 
 cuperative rest, with 
 nothing to worry you, 
 nobody to interfere with 
 you, and — best of all 
 * — nothing to do. Now 
 for that enviable period of inertia — a delicious 
 dream of dolce far niente." 
 
 You firmly believe that you are going to " dolce- 
 far-nient," but you never do. Not a bit of it. Accom- 
 panying you are fully as many people as in your most 
 crowded moments you ever meet on land. And 
 these people are absolutely bent on finding something 
 — generally anything — to do, and routing you from 
 your pleasurable sloth to help them do it. Many a 
 time have I sworn, as I tucked my steamer-rug cosily 
 
2 The Great Wet Way 
 
 around my feet, adjusted my chair at a comfortable 
 angle, and armed myself with a coveted book, that 
 no power on sea, other than a fire or a ship- 
 wreck, should dislodge me. Yet I have never suc- 
 ceeded in discomfiting the fiends whose business it is 
 to provide me, willy-nilly, with something to do. 
 I have settled myself in a particularly entrancing 
 
 -W^£rOT* ri [ A** if 
 
 ^.-"'^I M^^'v M F^" 
 
 X 
 
 « 
 
 <?/*»;?%-. 
 
 lethargy, and am determined to " do myself good " at 
 all costs, when the usual thing happens. An excited 
 passenger rushes up to me, stands in front of me, 
 and begins : " Come to the other side of the ship. 
 Quick. For goodness sake, don't miss it. Every- 
 body's there, and you'll be sorry if you don't come. 
 Put that silly old book away, and come on." 
 I sigh resignedly, unpick my steamer-rug from my 
 
The Queer Things We See 3 
 
 resistless limbs, drop my book, and accept the vivid 
 hand that the excited passenger offers. He helps 
 me up, and drags me with him to the other side of 
 the ship, where the wind is blowing a gale, and it is 
 hateful. All the passengers are there, in agitated 
 groups. Emotion is in the air, wind-tossed. There 
 seems to be a great deal doing. Men and women are 
 talking in all kinds of voice; they are armed with 
 opera-glasses, field-glasses, and telescopes. It is a 
 busy moment. 
 
 " Look! " cries my chaperon. " Look. See where 
 I'm pointing? Follow my finger. There. You've 
 got it. You must see it." 
 
 But I don't. I see nothing. There is plenty of 
 water, and there is plenty of sky, but not more than 
 usual of either. There are also many clouds. I see 
 all that, and nothing more, and I say so. 
 
 " Nonsense ! " he exclaims testily. " Here, take 
 my glasses, and look straight ahead of you — as 
 straight as you can. Now do you see? " 
 
 Now I see. I see a black speck on the horizon. I 
 hate black specks. A year ago I saw so many of 
 them that I went to a doctor, and he told me that 
 it was indigestion. I had to take pepsin after meals 
 for three months. And now this idiot appears to be 
 intensely rejoiced because he has forced me to per- 
 ceive an inoffensive black speck on the horizon. 
 
 " It is a boat! " he cries joyously. " There is no 
 doubt about it at all. If you look carefully — take 
 
4 The Great Wet Way 
 
 your time, old chap — you'll see the smoke. Yes, it s 
 a boat — a boat — a boat! " 
 
 This passenger is a perfectly sane, level-headed 
 business man. He is going to Constantinople to sell 
 sausage cases — surely a pleasing and romantic mis- 
 sion. Yet he is all worked up, because he thinks he 
 sees a boat on the horizon. I am amazed. If he 
 could see a Brooklyn trolley-car, a Strand omnibus, 
 or a touring automobile, I should be able to under- 
 stand his excitement. But a boat! One expects to 
 see boats, for ours is not the only vessel on the At- 
 lantic Ocean. There are scores of others. I look at 
 him, and marvel at his agitation. Everybody else is 
 equally agitated. One would think that a boat was 
 the most extraordinary and dramatic thing that had 
 ever happened. On land, in a subway train, nobody 
 betrays any very intense emotion when another 
 train passes. One would be more surprised to see a 
 flock of sheep or a herd of cows. 
 
 " I asked the Captain about it," he goes on, and 
 I do not doubt him. The poor Captain is there to 
 be asked asinine questions all day long. " The Cap- 
 tain says it's a tramp. Only a tramp. It is probably 
 going to Nova Scotia. The Captain couldn't say 
 for certain, but later on he will be quite sure. 
 Thanks, I'll take my glasses. I don't want to miss 
 anything." 
 
 Do not imagine that you will ever be allowed to 
 miss any passing boats. If there are any going, you 
 
The Queer Things We See 
 
 will be forced to watch them 
 until they fade from sight. A 
 hundred passengers will dog 
 your footsteps, and worry you, 
 until, in sheer desperation, you 
 resign yourself to the inevi- 
 table. 
 
 The sight of one poor little 
 tramp in mid-ocean is, how- 
 ever, as nothing compared 
 with another attraction which 
 plunges the passengers into a 
 seething vortex of fervour. It never fails. It is per- 
 sistent, and it is reliable. I was napping in my state- 
 room when this event occurred last year. A loud 
 knock at my door awakened me, and in came my 
 room-mate all wrought up. He was beside himself, 
 and I wished that he had stayed there, instead of 
 putting himself beside me. 
 
 " I knew you would be furious if you missed it," 
 he said palpitatingly, " you've just time to get up on 
 deck. I can't wait. Come on." 
 
 Off he rushed. Although I had " presentiments," 
 I felt that I was compelled to follow him. That is 
 the trouble. One is afraid not to investigate the 
 ship's little excitements. They might be big ones, 
 though they never are. On deck, I found a chaotic 
 assemblage of passengers, jostling each other for 
 places at the ship's side. Boys had clambered into 
 
6 The Great Wet Way 
 
 the lifeboats, stout matrons stood on steamer chairs, 
 Wall Street magnates elbowed themselves to the rail. 
 Even the clergy had lost their serenity and poise. A 
 
 PUSHUP 
 
 o -o '■; 
 
 '*wfcfc~ 
 
 Roman Catholic priest leaned so far over the rail 
 that he appeared to be contemplating suicide. 
 
 " See them I " cried the priest. " Are they not cun- 
 ning? It's a shoal of porpoises, sure enough. Look 
 at them, leaping through the water." 
 
 I am willing to swear that they were the very same 
 porpoises that I had seen thirty times before. In 
 
The Queer Things We See 7 
 
 fact, I recognised one very fat porpoise by the twinkle 
 in his eye. All that these porpoises do, for a living, 
 is to describe semicircles in the water. They do this 
 most energetically for five minutes, and seem to enjoy 
 it. Then they get sick of it, and cease to follow us. I 
 know so completely what transatlantic passengers 
 think of porpoises, that I always wonder what the 
 porpoises think of transatlantic passengers. I can 
 imagine that fat porpoise with the twinkling eye say- 
 ing to his mate : " There they are again — those 
 floating hayseeds. Look at them — one more foolish 
 than the other. Let's give them the shake. Come on, 
 mommer, into the quiet and unspoiled sea." The 
 porpoises make the hit of their gay young fishy lives 
 as they do their little turn. It is a free show. It is 
 the only free thing on the ship. No steamship com- 
 pany has yet decided to charge for the porpoise view. 
 This will undoubtedly come later. I shall not sub- 
 scribe. I shall buy a ticket without porpoises. These 
 fish never do anything new. They are utterly lack- 
 ing in originality. 
 
 But the passengers were all agog. They were 
 making notes in their diaries. (There are hundreds 
 of miserable wretches on shore to whom those diaries 
 will be read.) I watched the diary fiends. One 
 wrote : " Aug. 16. Seen a shoal of porpoises." An- 
 other jotted down more elegantly: " Aug. 16. Por- 
 poises observed in latitude — , longitude — ." A 
 third, of a more literary persuasion, began: "We 
 
8 The Great Wet Way 
 
 were all resting comfortably after lunch, when what 
 should we see but some jolly, lovely little fish that 
 are known as ." 
 
 He looked up at me, and asked ingenuously: 
 " What is the plural of ' porpoise ' ? " 
 
 I told him that I had every reason to believe that 
 the plural was quite the same this year as last — simply 
 " porpoises." 
 
 " Thank you so much," he said, quite unabashed. 
 " I thought it was ' porpi.' Porpus — porpi. .Very 
 foolish of me." 
 
 To which I replied " Not at all " or " Don't men- 
 tion it " or " It's a pleasure " — or some feeble phrase 
 of that ilk. The porpoises seemed to exert a benign 
 influence on the ship. People who had never spoken 
 to each other before, broke the ice, and grew chatty. 
 Several haughty folks came down from their perches, 
 and talked quite genially, and un-uppishly. In fact, 
 we were as one big family — not that big families are 
 especially amiable, for they usually are not. We were 
 as one big family that had just " made up " after a 
 period of the protracted bicker that is so popular 
 with big families when they are respectable and dis- 
 agreeable. 
 
 On land, you would refuse to cross the street to 
 look at a shoal of porpoises if they were offered you 
 on the other side. At sea, you are supposed to be 
 hopelessly addicted to the very things that you de- 
 spise when you are not there. I have met these por- 
 
The Queer Things We See 
 
 poise fiends, rushing in contemptu- 
 ous haste through the magnificent 
 aquarium at Naples, because 
 Naples is not in mid-ocean, and its 
 wonders are discounted when they 
 can be gazed at comfortably. I 
 have encountered porpoise enthusi- 
 asts who live in New York, but 
 have never visited Manhattan's 
 aquarium. It is just a sort of sea- 
 mania. There are many sea 
 manias. The salt water seems to 
 bring them out, and I daresay that 
 they are better out than in. They are nearly all ex- 
 traordinary, and peculiar to the transatlantic cross- 
 ing. They flourish luxuriantly during the trip, and 
 are as dead as a doornail, hopelessly past resuscita- 
 tion, as soon as land is reached. Then they are 
 quickly forgotten. People hate to have the queer 
 things they do at sea thrown in their face when they 
 are planted on prosaic dry land. The logic of their 
 nature quietly re-asserts itself. It has been but tem- 
 porarily displaced. 
 
 There is one particular steamship occupation for 
 which it is quite impossible to furnish an adequate 
 explanation. I refer to the rabid and energetic col- 
 lection of autographs — autographs of nobodies — 
 that we all feel impelled to make. I always find my- 
 self running after Mr. Jones of Kalamazoo, or Mr. 
 
io The Great Wet Way- 
 
 Smith of Prairie du Chien, Wis., and simply begging 
 him for his autograph. I eagerly hand him my pas- 
 senger list, or an autograph book for him to sign. 
 Now I have never heard before of either Mr. Jones, 
 or Mr. Smith, and sincerely hope never to hear of 
 him again. Yet I pester such people for their auto- 
 graphs, and am not happy until I get them. I don't 
 know why. It is a sea mania. 
 
 You find yourself cornering dreadful people, and 
 absolutely holding them up for their autographs, 
 which you will immediately throw away as soon as 
 you land. It is a most remarkable thing. You are 
 perfectly serious about it; you make the demand dif- 
 fidently ; you stand there obsequiously while the auto- 
 graph is written, and you walk away with it triumph- 
 antly with a sort of " I-have-eaten-the-canary " ex- 
 pression on your face. 
 
 These people are perfect strangers to you. You 
 have never spoken to them before in your life. If 
 you met them subsequently in the street, you would 
 probably fail to recognise them. But you must have 
 their autographs. There is a something, and I have 
 no idea what it is, that prompts you to collect worth- 
 less autographs. I am an anti-autograph fiend on dry 
 land, and have no use for the finest specimen going, 
 unless it be appended to a fat and happy cheque. I 
 do not consider an autograph characteristic of the 
 man who writes it. It is usually a splurge in a hand- 
 writing that he uses for no other purpose. It tells 
 
The Queer Things We See 
 
 ii 
 
 you nothing. If I ad- 
 mire an author, or a play- 
 wright, I should greatly 
 cherish a page of his manu- 
 script, which would be as- 
 suredly characteristic. I 
 do not care a hang for 
 his autograph or for a 
 cart-load of any auto- 
 graphs. 
 
 Yet on the ship, I am 
 hustling around, beseech- ' rs * 1 ^ 
 ing people to sign my menu, and doing it as though 
 my very life depended on the success of the quest. I 
 am most generous with my own autograph, and hand 
 it out right and left. Anybody can have it. There 
 are boys and girls on board who are hopeless victims 
 of this curious mania. There are old women who 
 are badly bitten. Some of them make you write your 
 name in pencil on afternoon-tea cloths, or doilies, and 
 then work in silk over your signature. Beautiful 
 thought ! 
 
 A busy young girl on a recent return trip wore a 
 hat all covered with the autographs of passengers 
 with whom she had sailed from New York. It was 
 a Panama hat, and as she walked round and round 
 the deck, you could read such names as : " Moe 
 Levy," "Archibald Einstein," "Percy Pruneface," 
 " Fay Dinkelspiel " and " Katusha Isaacs." She 
 
12 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 never wore any other hat. She was awfully proud 
 of it. When you saw the hat in the distance, the 
 blur of signatures on the straw ground looked quite 
 disreputable. The hat had the appearance of being 
 battered and dirty. As it grew nearer you read 
 gradually: " Moe Levy," "Archibald Einstein," etc., 
 and the signatures got on your nerves. I often found 
 myself wondering what Moe Levy, Archibald Ein- 
 stein, Percy Pruneface, and the others were doing at 
 that particular moment and where they were ! There 
 was even a kind of maudlin pathos about these reflec- 
 tions — the sort of pathos that is usually the result 
 of persistent libation. Now, I ask you if that 
 girl, who seemed to be a sensible, practical young 
 person, would dare to walk down Broadway or 
 
 Fifth Avenue wearing 
 that hideous autograph 
 hat, which was as unbe- 
 coming as it was ab- 
 normal? She would prob- 
 ably be followed by a 
 howling and derisive mob 
 of chaotic small boys. 
 Yet on board ship she 
 was unmolested. After 
 the first few days nobody 
 noticed the autograph 
 hat. It had stamped its 
 eccentricity on the ship. 
 
The Queer Things We See 13 
 
 People write their names in Tennyson or Long- 
 fellow " birthday books " by the side of some lovely 
 poetic quotation. For instance in a space allotted 
 to May 25, you read: 
 
 With promise of a morn as fair 
 Arid all the train of bounteous hours 
 Conduct by paths of glowing powers 
 The reverence and the silver hair. 
 
 This delightful verse graces the birthday of 
 "Sylvia Potzenheimer " or "Marian Schlachski," 
 and " gems " from many Tennyson and Longfellow 
 poems are made to fit the birthdays of equally delight- 
 ful people. It is very pleasing, and the books fill up 
 quickly. Object: unknown. Birthday presents seem 
 to have gone out of fashion. I fancy I must have 
 written my name in at least a hundred birthday books. 
 Nobody has ever sent me a birthday present. I live 
 in hopes that some day my lavishly scattered auto- 
 graphs may bear fruit. Up to the present, they have 
 been hopelessly sterile. Perhaps they have been 
 thrown into the waste-paper basket. 
 
 The collection of autographs on board ship is just 
 " something to do " — something very silly, I think, 
 but I can't help doing it. I shall do it again next year. 
 I know I shall, though at this precise moment I real- 
 ise the bewildering imbecility of the proceeding. 
 Sometimes the request for your autograph is rather 
 
H 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 flattering — on land. At sea, never. At sea, you 
 know that people do not really want your signature ; 
 they have merely " got to have it," for reasons that, 
 as I said before, are perfectly inexplicable. 
 
 o 
 
 People cannot get out of the habit of " doing 
 things." They have been doing things all winter; 
 they have promised themselves a complete rest on 
 board ship, and lo ! they cannot rest. They are im- 
 
The Queer Things We See 15 
 
 pelled to eternal movement, like the Wandering Jew. 
 Rather than do nothing gracefully, they do every- 
 thing ungracefully. They stand on deck, in the broil- 
 ing sun, and play shuffleboard, a most stupefying pro- 
 ceeding, to my mind. They call it a pastime, and not 
 a proceeding. You see them playing by the hour, 
 pushing what looks like a dog-biscuit into a num- 
 bered, chalk-marked square, with an instrument that 
 resembles a rake. They are quite excited about it, 
 and even wax indignant when you happen to walk 
 over the chalk-marks and interfere with their game. 
 
 They do not play for stakes, but for pure honour 
 and glory, which are always delectable, if not nourish- 
 ing. Some miserable sailor chalks up the deck for 
 them — generally about the third day out — and they 
 are busy at this " pastime " until they land. On shore, 
 they would probably regard it as a lunatic sport. At 
 sea, it is invested with the charm of complete recrea- 
 tion. It " kills time." Everybody wants to " kill 
 time." To me it seems a great pity, for goodness 
 knows, it will die a natural death. Time-killers are 
 murderers, though they never realise that fact. Many 
 people on board ship will tell you that they are suffer- 
 ing from nervous breakdown or some other neuras- 
 thenic contortion, but there they are, using all their 
 nervous force to invent some particularly inane 
 method of " killing time " easily. 
 
 Repose is a quality that is unknown on the ocean- 
 liner, unless it be a very rough passage, and every- 
 
1 6 The Great Wet Way 
 
 body is sea-sick. It is a cruel thing to say, and I 
 rather hate myself for saying it, but sea-sickness does 
 keep people awfully good, and it gives you a chance 
 to read a bit* and " loaf " a bit, and indulge in the 
 supreme and unsurpassed luxury of quiet — unless you, 
 too, be laid low ! But sea-sickness does not last long. 
 Its victims recover rapidly, and are all the livelier 
 for their little bout. They make up for lost time. 
 
 On one trip about twenty boys and girls, whose 
 ages varied from eighteen to twenty-five, had all been 
 prostrated by sea-sickness. They were soon better — 
 they were soon awe-inspiringly well. Their health 
 
 was astoundingly improved, and they became the 
 " life " of the ship. At night, they sat in their 
 steamer-chairs on deck, and sang steadily from eight 
 o'clock till midnight. They sang through all the 
 musical comedies, operettas, burlesques, extrava- 
 ganzas, and rag-time excrescences of the New York 
 season. There was scarcely a known coon-ditty that 
 they did not sing in " glee " form. They sang college 
 songs and national airs, and Sousa marches, and even 
 two-steps. The supply never gave out. They 
 warbled horrors from the music-halls. They gave 
 
The Queer Things We See 17 
 
 us the classic numbers of Vesta Victoria, Alice Lloyd, 
 Vesta Tilley, Harry Lauder, and all the rest of the 
 " vaudeville " nightingales of both sexes. 
 
 These they sang every night, without respite. They 
 never seemed to speak to each other — only to sing. 
 Impossible to escape this chorus, except perchance in 
 the hold of the ship, among the trunks. All the non- 
 singing passengers objected, but nobody dared to say 
 so. These young persons were amusing themselves 
 innocently, and though cynics may aver that inno- 
 cence can be obnoxious, they may not say so. 
 
 Music certainly hath charms. It must have. But 
 exactly why twenty nice young men and women should 
 shout coon-songs at each other, instead of revelling 
 in affable discussion, is something of a sea-mystery. 
 On land, they would have exchanged confidences, have 
 indulged in perfectly pardonable gossip, have ad- 
 dicted themselves to the pleasing pursuit of rubber- 
 necking. At sea, they sang. They lifted up their 
 voices in " Afraid to go Home in the Dark," " Stop 
 ,Your Tickling, Jock," "Waiting at the Church," 
 and "I Don't Like Your Family." Merry, effer- 
 vescent, rollicking young folks I Perhaps they were 
 anxious to drown the swish of the Atlantic in the 
 billows produced by their own vocal chords. If so, 
 they succeeded. 
 
 Steamship companies realise the inability of pas- 
 sengers to take the sea-cure, and enjoy mental and 
 physical relaxation. There is the " shopping wo- 
 
1 8 The Great Wet Way 
 
 man " on board ship, who is very indignant at being 
 idle for seven days. She may not want to buy any- 
 thing — she rarely does — but she wants to " shop." 
 
 " I simply cannot wait until I get to Sixth Avenue 
 and Twenty-third Street," said one of her to me last 
 year. "I call the transatlantic trip brutal and 
 deadening. I'd like to be shot across the ocean in a 
 pneumatic tube. I need the dry-goods stores. I 
 could just live in them, and it is in New York that 
 they flourish in all their perfection." 
 
 This artistic feminine soul was rejoiced at the dis- 
 covery that the ship's barber had things to sell. She 
 spent most of her mornings with the barber, looking 
 at his wares. It was on one of the Holland-America 
 Line's boats. He had for sale little wooden shoes, 
 Dutch tiles, hat-pins, combs, flags, pocket-books, sou- 
 venirs of Holland, and a large variety of similar de- 
 lights. She was happy when she discovered this, and 
 announced quite emphatically that she was enjoying 
 her trip at last. Just before landing, she grew reck- 
 less, and showed us a Dutch tile that she had pur- 
 chased, after anxious deliberation, for forty-five cents. 
 She was informed by some presumably jealous^ sister- 
 passenger, that she had been " done " and that those 
 particular tiles were to be seen, in lavish display, at 
 the " five and ten cent " stores in New York. 
 
 Books, flowers, and candies, which are for sale on 
 many liners, do not interest the " shopping woman." 
 She likes something more useful. She clamours for 
 ribbons and laces and gew-gaws. A big dry-goods 
 
3 
 
 O 
 
 T3 
 
 a 
 IS 
 
 c 
 43 
 c 
 
 a, 
 
 o 
 u 
 
 Oh 
 
 O 
 
 T3 
 
 C 
 
 '-Pi 
 
 O 
 
The Queer Things We See 19 
 
 store with a ranch on board ship would be enormously 
 patronised. Possibly this attraction will be offered in 
 the not very distant future, and it will be interesting 
 to watch " sea-shoppers," and note their peculiarities. 
 For, as every taste on board ship differs from that 
 observed on land, the sea-shopper will be a curiosity. 
 
 The only thing on board ship that differs in no es- 
 sential from the similar pursuit on land, is the game 
 of cards in the smoke-room. The sea-change is not 
 apparent at bridge, for instance. People are just as 
 ratty and as disagreeable on the ocean as on land. 
 I find that my partners at bridge, in mid-Atlantic, are 
 just as ready to call me to task and book me as a 
 fool as they are at home. They do not regard my 
 had play with any particular sea-favour. In fact, they 
 are just as alive to my shortcomings as a bridge- 
 player. As they have been perfect strangers to me 
 before the game, I am always in hopes that they will 
 be amiable and long-suffering, as they never are on 
 land. But they never are on sea. 
 
 The smoke-room on the liner is filled with people 
 anxious to forget the ocean, and be as much on land 
 as they can. Those who don't play cards watch those 
 who do. In a bridge game, you find a dozen people 
 standing behind you, and watching your play — which 
 is enough to rattle the strongest-minded. You feel 
 that you are bound to play according to the ideas of 
 the twelve good men and true at your back. On 
 land, you would request them to run away and play, 
 and leave you to your miserable fate. At sea, you are 
 
20 The Great Wet Way 
 
 << „(. «=n >> 
 
 at their mercy — which is the same as being at sea 
 in another sense. I grow hopelessly muddled, do the 
 most idiotic things, and am regarded with awe, 
 mingled with contempt. 
 
 At sea, the same inexplicable sentiment that tempts 
 me to collect autographs induces me to play bridge — 
 which I can't play. It is amazing. I find myself 
 running around, trying to unearth three people upon 
 whom to saddle myself. Often, I am regarded as a 
 " card-sharp " — I feel sure of that. My strange 
 frenzy for bridge stamps me as a gambler, and people 
 look askance at me. They fear me — until they have 
 played with me, when they despise me. I have the 
 face of a card sharp. I know it, and the idea is op- 
 pressive and haunting. I am innocent and ingenuous, 
 confiding, foolish, and frivolous, but I do not look it. 
 I try to put on a transparent and boyish expression, 
 as I endeavour to capture my three victims, and per- 
 haps the keen desire I feel to be looked upon as harm- 
 less militates against me. 
 
 The twelve people who stand behind me, watching 
 my game, are very suspicious at first. They are anx- 
 ious to protect my three victims, if necessary. This 
 never lasts long. At the end of the first rubber, I 
 have invariably shown my quality — the quality of a 
 card-idiot. This is, perhaps, the most remarkable 
 of all the sea-manias, for knowing my utter inferiority 
 as a bridge-player, I am nevertheless impelled, by 
 irresistible impulse, to play in the smoke-room, and 
 give myself away to a batch of callous strangers. On 
 
The Queer Things We See 21 
 
 one occasion I played with three Texans, all bridge 
 experts ! I played with the courage born of ignorance, 
 but only one game. They never spoke to me again. 
 They probably thought that I had escaped from some 
 lunatic asylum. And I had hunted them up, and 
 begged them to play ! After each game I am filled 
 with remorse, self-contempt, bitter humiliation, and 
 I try to swear off. It is impossible. It is a sea-obses- 
 sion, and I am in its clutches. 
 
 The queer things we see, and the queer things we 
 do on board ship, are, as a matter of fact, unique. 
 You go on board sane, logical, level-headed and se- 
 rious; you become comparatively insane, unlevel- 
 headed, and trivial. You lose your balance, and why 
 you lose it, is something that I have never yet been 
 able to explain. You never change your identity 
 when you stay at a big hotel on land. But just be- 
 cause that big hotel floats, and rests on the salty 
 depths of the Atlantic, you are temporarily some- 
 body else. You realise the significance of the dual 
 personality, and you bow to what seems to be an 
 inexorable law. When I find myself opera-glass- 
 ing the passing ship, raving over a shoat of por- 
 poises, in fevered quest of passengers' autographs, 
 and playing bridge in the; smoke-room, I am con- 
 vinced that I have left my other self on shore. I 
 am somebody else whom I scarcely recognise, and 
 certainly do not admire. My real self would cut my 
 ship self dead on Fifth Avenue or Broadway! 
 
II 
 
 THE ROOM-MATE 
 
 F you possess a gentle, 
 confiding, optimistic na- 
 ture, and are not too 
 hampered by the malev- 
 olent whisperings of a 
 sense of humour, you will 
 not be affrighted by the 
 sudden appearance on 
 your horizon of the 
 room-mate. I do not 
 say that you can ever 
 ^learn to love the room- 
 mate, but with certain 
 mental attributes you can 
 brush him aside as you 
 would the playful and persistent mosquito. 
 
 Of the room-mate I can speak from my soul! I 
 know him in all his varieties. I can prate of him 
 when he is unique, and comparatively amenable to 
 reason; when he is double, and less amenable to rea- 
 son, and — the admission is horrible — when he is 
 triple. Let me make myself clearly understood. I 
 have lived the subtle and intimate life of the ocean- 
 steamer stateroom, with one mate, with two mates, 
 and with three mates ! I have invariably arrived 
 
 22 
 
The Room-Mate 23 
 
 sa f ely at my destination. Permit me to dwell upon that 
 fact, for, with three room-mates I did not seem to 
 mind much whether I landed or not. Nothing mat- 
 tered particularly. A shipwreck on a desert island 
 (though desert islands are disgustingly rare now- 
 adays) would not have been detestable. On a desert 
 island, at least, I could have crawled away to some se- 
 cluded nook, and have shaken my three room-mates. 
 
 Oddly enough, you do not select your own room- 
 mate. The steamship company, in affectionate regard, 
 does that for you. The steamship company never 
 positively insists upon giving you a room-mate. For 
 a consideration, it will graciously assign you a cabin 
 to yourself. Fate has always doomed me to cross the 
 Atlantic at the very time when everybody wanted 
 to do the same thing, and I have never been million- 
 airish enough to treat myself to solitude. 
 
 The room-mate for me has loomed perpetually! 
 The various steamship companies have chosen mates 
 for me with a sweet and graceful lack of discrimina- 
 tion that has touched my heart. I have never se- 
 lected my own companions, nor have I ever known 
 until the solemn moment of " Now I lay me down 
 to sleep " the style of my associates. At first I used 
 to be nervous and apprehensive. Being a dramatic 
 critic — by trade! — I foresaw my room-mates as re- 
 vengeful actors or vindictive managers, on board 
 for the express purpose of murdering me as I slept 
 the sleep of the unjust. I pictured my own helpless- 
 
24 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 ness as, alone with these owners of grievances, I was 
 left completely at their mercy — rocked, of course, in 
 the cradle of the deep. 
 
 On one occasion my fears were so cruel that two 
 days before sailing I went to the steamship company, 
 and stated my case. " Give me anybody I " I cried 
 pitifully. " Let my companion be a bunco-steerer, a 
 confidence man, or an absconding bank president, 
 but do not jostle me with an actor. If you happen 
 to have any unobtrusive murderer on your list, let 
 him room with me, please. I prefer it. It is an 
 idiosyncrasy of mine." 
 
 Since I have grown older and wiser — but alas 1 not 
 richer — I have approached the room-mate with lesi 
 horror. I go to my stateroom and beam effulgently 
 upon the wretch who has appro- 
 priated all the pegs, most of the 
 cupboards, and all the trunk space 
 underneath the berths — besides 
 having his hat-boxes, suit-cases, 
 and hampers decorating the spot 
 intended for my occupancy. Good 
 nature exudes from the pores of 
 my skin. I love my room-mate. 
 You see, he is a fellow-creature. I 
 say that to myself several times — 
 " He is a fellow creature — he is a 
 fellow creature." 
 
 The fellow creature scowls at 
 
 Hurv\ 
 
The Room-Mate 
 
 2$ 
 
 me as I appear, so merry and debonair. He is un- 
 packing. He is not prepared to meet me. I murmur 
 a few graceful words to the effect that I shall have 
 occasion each night to snatch some minutes of happy 
 sleep in that particular stateroom. I put it very deli- 
 cately. I never say right out and brutally : " You are 
 my room-mate! " 
 
 He is usually very much shocked to see me there. 
 In his eyes, I am a leper. He continues his unpacking, 
 and evidently thinks that we shall be at sea for six 
 months, for his worldly goods seem endless. He 
 looks at me disagreeably and says: " Small quarters 
 for two." 
 
 But I am frightfully merry, and refuse to be dis- 
 mayed. I say joyously: " Oh, I daresay we can get 
 along. You'll never know I'm in the room. It isn't 
 a bad room, either. I've been in many worse " — 
 
The Great Wet Way 
 
 which is strictly true. However bad the room may 
 be, I have been in worse. 
 
 Then he says : " You don't snore, do you? " 
 That always " gets " me. If a man knew that he 
 snored, surely he would desist from such an atrocious 
 practice. Snoring seems to be some ugly manifesta- 
 tion of the subliminal, and a man is not responsible 
 for his subliminal. So many room-mates have told 
 me that I don't snore, that I am at least entitled to 
 say that I don't. And they usually do ! They seem 
 to be crossing the ocean just to snore. 
 
 However, I tell my interrogator that I have never 
 snored in my life, and let him know my opinion of 
 snorers. As a race, snorers should be sequestrated. 
 There is no hope for them. They are blots on the 
 fair face of — Morpheus. I might almost call them 
 freckles on that benign counte- 
 nance. Anti-snoring inventions are 
 of no avail. I once knew a man 
 who, at the instigation of his law- 
 ful wife, bought an anti-snorer, and 
 went to sleep with it carefully ad- 
 justed to his nose. In the middle of 
 the night, the family arose, and as- 
 sembled solemnly in the dining- 
 room. The snoring of the luckless 
 man was like the frantic wail of a 
 lost soul. In a procession, they went 
 to his room, tore off the anti-snorer, 
 
The Room-Mate 27 
 
 and buried it next morning in the garden. After that, 
 his normal snoring sounded like heavenly music. 
 
 "I suppose you don't read at night?" continues 
 my jolly cross-examiner, " because I can't sleep with 
 the light on." 
 
 Of course I read at night. That is the very time 
 when I do read. I select a " popular " novel, and it 
 always sends me to sleep. Give me a comfortable 
 bed, and the latest work of Marie Corelli or Hall 
 Caine, and insomnia is routed,, unless I happen to 
 have spoiled the night by a snooze at the Metropoli- 
 tan Opera House. (I usually promise myself to 
 keep awake at the Metropolitan, but I am sorely 
 tempted, and I fall — asleep.) 
 
 " I do not read at sea," I say sorrowfully, perceiv- 
 ing the sourness of the grapes. " I just tumble into 
 my bunk, and am asleep before you can say knife." 
 
 He looks as though he would like to do more than 
 say knife, but he unblocks the way and lets me in. 
 I tell him my name and as much of my pedigree as I 
 dare. He accepts these credentials, which are really 
 no better than the " written reference " of cooks, and 
 does not argue. Then, if I want the port-hole open, 
 he prefers it closed ; if I suggest shutting the door, he 
 hankers for it to be left on the hook ; if I ask that a 
 ray of light be left, so that I may know where I am 
 — which is sometimes necessary — he has an uncon- 
 querable craving for pitch darkness. 
 
 Throughout the trip, I feel like an intruder, and 
 
28 The Great Wet Way 
 
 am always apologising for being alive. I steal out 
 to a furtive bath in the morning while he is snor- 
 ing. I rush back, and dress, while he is still snoring, 
 and I try to avoid him during the day. Usually, just 
 before landing, he tells me how glad he is to have 
 met me, and gives me his card. He has grown ac- 
 customed to me. He will miss my merry moods, and 
 my boyish prattle. 
 
 It is much more difficult to pursue these tactics of 
 self-effacement when the agony is doubled, and there 
 are two room-mates. Still, I am such a stoic, that 
 even this fails to daunt me. My plan is this : to delay 
 my appearance until the two have met, and have 
 begun to loathe each other. I deliberately keep away 
 from my stateroom — or their stateroom — until I am 
 convinced that the worst has happened. Then I 
 burst in upon them like a beautiful vision. They are 
 both arranged on their shelves for the night, like 
 bric-a-brac, and I have the floor to myself. While 
 they do not look as pleased to see me as I could wish, 
 their recumbent position puts them at a disadvantage. 
 They have usually appropriated every available space 
 in the room, but as they are lying there helpless, I 
 gently remove their things, and hang up my own, 
 while I discourse airily on glittering generalities. It 
 is certainly a very fine boat, I say, as I take a coat 
 from my peg, and substitute one of my own; the 
 Captain seems to think that it will be an extremely 
 good trip, I murmur, as I remove a pair of reluctant 
 
The Room-Mate 29 
 
 trousers from my rack, and diffidently place my own 
 there ; and — er — this line takes such excellent care of 
 passengers, I tell them, as I dump all my collars and 
 ties in the little drawer, that my unselfish associates 
 have destined for their own. They watch me with 
 wakeful eyes, but each mate seems afraid of the 
 other. I find that this scheme works splendidly. I 
 am gentle but very firm — tender, yet masterful. 
 
 It is an odd predicament, when you come to an- 
 alyse it. Here we are, three absolute strangers, 
 jostled into unwilling intimacy, by the exigencies of 
 the Adantic Ocean. On terra frma such a condition 
 of things would be not only incongruous, but ribald. 
 The fact that there is water, instead of land, beneath 
 us, has given two unknown men the right to listen to 
 me, as I talk pleasantly in my sleep, and chatter un- 
 consciously of my past. 
 
 Once, and once only, was I one of a joyous quartet, 
 on a steamship announcing as a specialty " large airy 
 staterooms amidships." On that occasion, even my 
 sense of humour was routed, and I was a grave and 
 soured man travelling from England to the United 
 States with three fellow creatures, even graver and 
 more soured. When the four berths were " up " 
 the- large and airy stateroom could easily have been 
 covered by one of my favourite pocket-handkerchiefs. 
 When the four of us stood up at the same time in 
 the stateroom, it seemed like a dense crowd in the 
 subway, and I used to look for a strap from the ceil- 
 
20 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 ing to hang on to ! I missed the voice of the genial 
 conductor, crying " Step lively! " 
 
 One of us was a clergyman, very much oppressed 
 by his close quarters, and inclined to worry a good 
 deal more about his body than about his soul. There 
 was literally no room for souls. The minister had 
 never before crossed amid such surroundings. (He 
 looked at us so that we could not mistake his mean- 
 ing. We were the surroundings.) He took great 
 trouble to explain that he had intended booking by 
 the Kronprinz, the Kaiser Wilhelm, or the Lusitania, 
 but at the last moment his physician had recom- 
 mended him a slow steamer. He wanted us to know 
 
 — and it certainly was not 
 his fault if we didn't 
 know — that he had never 
 journeyed on one of these 
 boats before. I mildly 
 suggested that, even on 
 this line, he might have 
 had a deck stateroom. He 
 was prepared for that 
 suggestion. He had ap- 
 plied for a deck state- 
 room. There were none 
 left. Having explained 
 his unwilling presence in 
 our midst, he proceeded 
 to make the worst of it 1 
 
3 
 
 CO 
 
 CD 
 
 "73 
 O 
 
 CD 
 
 13 
 
 T3 
 
The Room- Mate 
 
 3i 
 
 You will always meet people on slow lines who 
 carefully apologise for being there. They are im- 
 pelled to right themselves in your eyes, and to excuse 
 themselves for herding with you. They would hate 
 you to think that motives of economy have prompted 
 their selection of a slow boat. Curiously enough, I 
 always do think that, judging their motives by my 
 own. Most people on board ship like you to think 
 of them with the richest thoughts possible. It is 
 one of the oddities of ocean travel. Personally, I 
 see no earthly object in being thought wealthier than 
 I am — notl So I was the lowly one of this par- 
 
32 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 ticular quartet. Even the drummer — who travelled 
 " for hose " — was inclined to be a trifle affluent, and 
 retired for the night in silk pajamas, while I took 
 to my bunk in pure cotton! 
 
 It was not a cosy crossing. I used to try and 
 imagine that I was an Italian day-labourer, living in 
 a tenement house on the east-side, and I believe that 
 this was very good exercise for my imagination. 
 Dressing in the morning was rather precarious, un- 
 expected, and amusing. I often found myself in the 
 clergyman's shirt, or on the verge of donning the 
 drummer's trousers. The fourth passenger was the 
 safest. He was a very fat person, and his clothes 
 belonged to him, and to nobody else. We took no 
 liberties with his apparel. 
 
 Fortunately we were all robust, and well. Luckily, 
 we spent no more time in our " airy 
 stateroom amidships " than was ab- 
 solutely necessary. We took no naps 
 in the afternoon. We indulged in no 
 prolonged matutinal snoozes. We 
 came down from our shelves, like 
 animated ornaments, and stayed 
 down. It seemed delightful to meet 
 people on deck who were not room- 
 mates. I never before realised how 
 interesting a fellow can be when he 
 is somebody else's room-mate. 
 The room-mate is also feminine — 
 
The Room-Mate 
 
 33 
 
 for feminine passengers. By acute research I have 
 discovered that their grim satire is increased by the 
 translation to the other sex. The harrowing stories 
 told by room-mated women have led me to believe 
 that, after all, the room-mated man is not so much to 
 be pitied. In the solemnity of the stateroom, the 
 feminine passenger chafes as she is overlooked. Now- 
 adays, when the travelling woman is a work of art, 
 one hates to think of the unfortunate girl who is 
 dispassionately watched by a room-mate as she combs 
 out her "puffs," applies a fascinating "glint" to 
 her perfect tresses, and removes the stress of wind 
 and wave from her complexion. Solitude — utter 
 solitude — is what she clamours for, and behold the 
 poor thing is boxed up in unsought intimacy with — 
 perhaps — a Massachusettsian schoolmarm. or one of 
 
34 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 the gentle, purring, silver-tongued members of the 
 W. C. T. U. 
 
 It seems to me that the frivolous young thing who 
 creates havoc among the masculine passengers on an 
 ocean-liner is invariably associated in her stateroom 
 with the gaunt New England spinster who believes in 
 nature unadorned, and considers titivation to be lack- 
 ing in the first elements of respectability. Picture the 
 juxataposition of the chorus girl and the suffragette I 
 Imagine the dear promixity of a serio-comic and a 
 temperance' lecturer! These odd stateroom compan- 
 ionships frequently occur. The steamship com- 
 panies never worry. They are very sweet, and 
 unselfish, and optimistic about it. To the practical 
 steamship company, a room-mate is but a room- 
 mate, just as in the Wordsworthian poem : 
 
 A primrose by a river's brim 
 A yellow primrose was to him, 
 And it was nothing more. 
 
 In the offices of the steamship com- 
 panies the room-mate is neither comedy, 
 tragedy, farce, nor melodrama. He is 
 just room-mate, or human ballast. Try 
 and think of yourself as ballast, and all 
 will be well with you, and your days will 
 be long and happy on the ocean trip. 
 This may be difficult, but that which man 
 has done, man may do. Man has done 
 
The Room-Mate 
 
 35 
 
 it. I have. I have posed as one-hundred-and-forty 
 pounds of ballast during several months of my busy 
 life. 
 
 Crossing from Rotterdam to New York, recently, 
 I met a lady whom I knew very few. She came on 
 board at Boulogne, quite late at night. She wore a 
 look of haggard distress, and could scarcely find time 
 to ask me how I was, or say how pleased she was 
 to meet me. She stood quite still as she reached the 
 deck, and enquired of me most imperiously: 
 
 " Have you seen Miss Myers? " 
 
 At first I thought this was a riddle, or a " catch," 
 and I am awfully bad at riddles and " catches." I 
 
36 The Great Wet Way 
 
 said nothing, declining to compromise myself, or be- 
 tray my ignorance. But the lady — I shall call her 
 Mrs. Kelly — looked so ominous and serious that I 
 was puzzled. 
 
 "Who is Miss Myers?" I asked. 
 
 " Oh, I don't know," she replied. " I wish I did. 
 I'm so tired. I've been traipsing about Boulogne all 
 afternoon, waiting for this wretched boat. I should 
 love to go to bed, but I must see Miss Myers. 
 Who is she?" 
 
 " Probably the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. 
 Myers," I said flippantly. 
 
 "Don't!" cried Mrs. Kelly. " Don't 1 Oh, I 
 must find Miss Myers. Do please see if you can dis- 
 cover her. Ask the stewards ; search well, and bring 
 her to me. I will wait here." 
 
 An awful idea that Miss Myers must be some 
 desperate character, who had perhaps been trying to 
 murder Mrs. Kelly, flashed through my mind. I ran 
 off, and hunted for her. There was an enormous 
 crowd on board; the passages were lined with in- 
 coming trunks. All the stewards were busy, and not 
 at all inclined to discuss Miss Myers. I found the 
 Captain and implored him to tell me the truth about 
 Miss Myers. I promised to cherish his secret. The 
 Captain seemed to think that I was an escaped luna- 
 tic. High and low I sought for Miss Myers. I 
 read labels on steamer chairs, and got down on my 
 knees to decipher legends on trunks. It was no use, 
 
The Room-Mate 
 
 37 
 
 and I had to give up the search. It was quite im- 
 possible. 
 
 Mrs. Kelly was still standing where I had left her. 
 As she saw me approaching, she leaped forward, and 
 exultantly cried : " You have found Miss Myers I 
 You have found Miss Myers! " 
 
 I broke the news as delicately as I could. I had 
 
 not found Miss Myers; in fact I believed that Miss 
 Myers was like Mrs. 'Arris — there " wasn't no sich 
 person." 
 
 " But there is — there is ! " Mrs. Kelly almost wept. 
 " They told me about her in London. They told me 
 about her in Paris. They told me about her in 
 Boulogne. I have dreamed of her, and dreaded her. 
 The very thought of her drives me wild " 
 
38 The Great Wet Way- 
 
 Then, and then only, it dawned upon me that my 
 poor friend, Mrs. Kelly, was mad — mad as a March- 
 hare 1 Pleasure — European pleasure-— had unhinged 
 her reason. 
 
 "Never mind," I said gently, trying to humour 
 her. " Never mind. Perhaps there is a Miss Myers, 
 but she won't hurt you. I will see that she does not. 
 She is probably a very sweet girl, and she has forgiven 
 you. Yes, I am sure that she has forgiven you. She 
 has decided that revenge would be foolish and un- 
 christian. She is fond of you — I know she is — and 
 when you see her, just shake hands with her, and 
 say that you have determined to bury the hatchet." 
 
 " Her Christian name is Edith," murmured Mrs. 
 Kelly. 
 
 " And a very pretty name, too," I remarked, s,till 
 trying to humour her. " I love the name of Edith. 
 ' Edith Myers ' — it is euphonious. Now if I were 
 you, I should go to bed, and to-morrow you will feel 
 better and more like yourself." 
 
 " Don't be idiotic," said Mrs. Kelly peevishly, and 
 rather rudely, I thought. " I won't go to bed. This 
 Myers woman is my room-mate, and I'm not going 
 to undo myself, and look a sight, for a strange woman 
 to come in and laugh at. I'll stay up until I find her. 
 I begged the company for a room alone, but it was 
 impossible. All they could give me was a small cabin 
 with Miss Myers, and " — here Mrs. Kelly tried to 
 keep back the tears — " I'm a stout woman. I may 
 
The Room-Mate 
 
 39 
 
 even say that I'm a fat woman. I need space, and 
 plenty of it. Suppose — suppose — Miss Myers is also 
 fat. What then? What does the company care? 
 What redress have I? " 
 
 I am sorry to say that I laughed. I hated myself 
 for laughing. My sympathetic nature, however, as- 
 serted itself quickly. I tried to unearth some of the 
 balm that is popularly supposed to lurk in Gilead. 
 
 " She couldn't be fat, dear Mrs. Kelly," I said sim- 
 ply. " Why she is a girl; she is a ' miss ' ; it is absurb 
 to imagine her fat — just because — er — you happen to 
 be a bit plump. And ' Edith ' — ' Edith ' is such a 
 thin name. Oh, I feel sure that Miss Myers is a 
 sylph; she may even be emaciated. Let me see you 
 to your cabin, and introduce you." 
 
 She allowed me to accompany her along the pas- 
 sage to her stateroom. It 
 was indeed a small " in- 
 side " apartment, with two 
 berths. On a camp-stool 
 were letters addressed to 
 Miss Edith Myers; there 
 was no other indication of/ 
 her existence. 
 
 "You see! "cried Mrs. 
 Kelly, in dismal triumph. 
 " She'll come in at mid- 
 night, or later, and I shall 
 be in my bunk looking 
 
40 The Great Wet Way 
 
 odious, with my hair in crimpers, and cream on my 
 face. I always put cream on my face before retiring, 
 and it looks so slippery and dreadful. Why shouldn't 
 a respectable woman turn in at a decent hour? But 
 perhaps she isn't respectable. I don't believe she 
 is. She may be up in the smoke-room carousing. Do 
 go and see." 
 
 I persuaded Mrs. Kelly to forget Miss Myers, and 
 left her, eyeing the letters with sinister gaze. I ap- 
 preciated her sentiments with regard to the room- 
 mate — especially as at that moment I had to go and 
 inspect mine. Next morning, Mrs. Kelly told me that 
 she had passed a sleepless night, waiting for Miss 
 Myers, who never came. She insisted that she felt 
 very much like Mariana of the Moated Grange — in 
 fact even more so. Miss Myers' letters disappeared 
 during the day. We spent hours seeking for her, but 
 never found her. 
 
 That night Mrs. Kelly was told that she could 
 have the cabin to herself, as Miss Myers had been 
 able to accommodate herself elsewhere. Joy was 
 written on her face, but it was tempered by the cu- 
 rious feminine streak of " cussedness " that, to the 
 masculine mind, is so splendidly and so glitteringly 
 illogical. 
 
 " I'm glad to get rid of the creature," she said. 
 " Of course. But why the woman should avoid me 
 like a plague, I don't know. I daresay she thinks 
 I've some contagious disease. If I find her during the 
 trip, I'll give her a piece of my mind. She might at 
 
The Room-Mate 41 
 
 least have had the decency to come to me, and 
 apologise " 
 
 " Apologise? " I gasped. " What for? " 
 
 "Well, perhaps I should say explain," cor- 
 rected Mrs. Kelly. " An explanation was necessary. 
 It would have been courteous. Still, I'm satisfied. 
 I'm alone, at any rate. I always think that a woman 
 travelling alone is pathetic, don't you? I'd like to 
 catch a glimpse of Miss Myers. Perhaps, after all, 
 she was a nice, simple, unaffected young girl " 
 
 Consistency, thy name is woman ! 
 
 " How many life-long friendships have resulted 
 from the enforced companionship of the ocean- 
 liner?" asks the sentimentalist. (Sentimentalists in- 
 variably ask pungent questions, and never wait for 
 the answer.) To which I reply: perhaps, but not in 
 the case of room-mates. 
 
 My room-mates-that-were cross my path persist- 
 ently. I have met them at hotels, at theatres, in 
 trains, and wherever men do congregate. I look at 
 them sheepishly, and they return the look with more 
 of the sheepish quality. I recall their little eccentrici- 
 ties, and those cunning little ways that the Atlantic 
 Ocean brings out — like measles. I think of them, 
 pajama'd and cranky, in the silence of the mid- At- 
 lantic nights, and perhaps I nod haughtily, as I recog- 
 nise them. Perhaps they do, too. They have the 
 same benign thoughts of me that I have of them. 
 Something we speak — of nothing in particular, and 
 everything in general. 
 
42- 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 The ex-room-mate I meet at the theatre no longer 
 says to me, " Do you snore? " I wonder, as I look 
 at him, how he ever dared to ask me such a leading 
 question. But he did dare. At the theatre, when we 
 condescend to talk, we discuss the play in an imper- 
 sonal manner. He is not even anxious to know 
 whether I read at night. A life-long friendship with 
 an ex-room-mate? Perish the thought. The mys- 
 tery is lacking. The ideal is absent. Imagine being 
 eternally with a man whom you first saw wobbling 
 all over a rickety stateroom, and then beheld neatly 
 tucked up in an abbreviated bunk, and aggressively 
 clad in baby-blue for the night. 
 
 The ex-room-mate is a thing apart, and a memory. 
 His materialisation would be vain, and quite unneces- 
 sary. You try to banish him from your life, as you 
 see him for the last time, usually in the grip of the 
 Custom House, perjuring his soul for all it is worth, 
 and looking very fervid and uneasy about it. This 
 is a fitting end to the room-mate. To meet him again 
 in every-day life, to resurrect him, as it were, is an 
 anti-climax. Life is full of anti-climaxes, but I re- 
 spectfully submit that they are inartistic and de- 
 moralising. 
 
Ill 
 
 PARTAKING OE _ NOURISHMENT 
 
 F Lucullus could cross 
 the Atlantic to-day, 
 he would probably 
 grumble, in pictur- 
 esque discontent,at the 
 "food." That is part 
 P 1 ^ of one's daily duty on 
 board ship. Even 
 though the splendidly 
 thought-out and com- 
 pletely artistic din- 
 ners served on some 
 of the liners would 
 probably make the 
 historical banquets of 
 Lucullus look like " thirty cents " — not excluding the 
 famous repast at which Caesar and Pompey sur- 
 prised him — he would undoubtedly growl, as every- 
 body growls, on the popular steamship. Lucullus 
 would presumably think up something that was not 
 on the bill of fare, and ask pathetically for that one 
 
 43 
 
44 The Great Wet Way 
 
 particular something, waxing extremely imperious 
 and indignant if it were not forthcoming. 
 
 You can have more fun watching the gastronomic 
 peculiarities of transatlantic passengers than you 
 can obtain at a circus. The dining-room of an ocean 
 steamship is a circus. The meals are arranged on 
 the comfortable principle that every passenger is a 
 connoisseur. It is a principle that lands the steam- 
 ship companies in a veritable jungle of misunder- 
 standing. For every connoisseur on board, there are 
 ten barbarians, who do not demand artistic fare, but 
 clamour merely for " food." They just want to 
 " eat." They admit this. They say it. You will 
 hear women, elegantly gowned, extremely be-jew- 
 elled, and obtrusively costly-looking, saying to each 
 other, in dulcet tones : " Let's go down to the saloon, 
 and eat." 
 
 This is, of course, very frank and accurate. They 
 do want to " eat " because they are hungry. But I 
 always think that mere eating is rather a nauseating 
 process. It is an animal function that we are at least 
 permitted to colour gracefully, and attune to the cour- 
 tesies of life. As we " eat " in society, we might as 
 well be as nice about it as possible. Pigs and cows 
 " eat." Pigs and cows never breakfast, or lunch, or 
 dine. Therefore we might as well do so — if only to 
 distinguish ourselves from the pigs and cows. . Not 
 that I am saying a word against or attempting to 
 slight the pigs and cows. On the contrary, I like 
 
Partaking of Nourishment 4$ 
 
 them. But some of the things they do in their way 
 I prefer to do differently in mine. That is all. Call 
 me " uppish," if you will. I thoroughly enjoy observ- 
 ing the " eaters " on board ship, because they are so 
 lovely, and so deliciously amusing. I am referring 
 of course to the majority. A minority, in anything, is 
 rarely entertaining, because it is absolutely correct. 
 
 Many transatlantic passengers — generally Ameri- 
 cans — who are returning to the United States after 
 a few months of European travel, impress you in- 
 delibly with the idea that they are going home only 
 for food ! This sounds absurd, but you can draw no 
 other conclusions from the brilliant remarks that you 
 hear at the table. 
 
 " Well, I shall be mighty glad to get back to good 
 old New York," said a young man who sat opposite 
 at table, last year. " Europe's all right. London and 
 Paris know a few things. But I want some green 
 corn from the cob, and I shan't do a thing to it when 
 I get home. I tell you, old chap, you miss green 
 corn in London and Paris. You never know what 
 a great thing it is until you can't get it." 
 
 " You should have taken a quicker boat," I sug- 
 gested, as I watched him looking quite hopelessly at 
 a supreme de volatile. "You'll be a long time get- 
 ting into green corn on this ship." 
 
 He talked green corn all the way to New York, and 
 was very droll. It was his first trip abroad. He had 
 " done " London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and Buda- 
 
46 The Great Wet Way- 
 
 pest very completely, but he was miserable and home- 
 sick. He was home-sick for green corn. Perhaps he 
 had " loved ones " in New York. Very probably. 
 These, however, appeared to count for little. The 
 one thing that made life worth living seemed to be 
 green corn. It was impossible to avoid that con- 
 clusion. 
 
 I sat beside a sweet little lassie from Pittsburg on 
 one occasion. She had been through Italy — all the 
 way through — and had spent several weeks in Venice. 
 She was hung with corals. Wherever there was 
 space on her person for a coral — there was the coral 1 
 She thought Italy " quite a country," and even went 
 so far as to admit that in some things, Venice was 
 prettier than Pittsburg. 
 
 " Just the same," she said cooingly, " I'm just 
 crazy to get back. Venice is nice, but I couldn't 
 stand the food. I can't wait till I see Pittsburg again, 
 and get some of mommer's fried chicken. There's 
 nothing like it in Italy. Mommer's fried chicken 
 just melts in your mouth. I feel home-sick when I 
 think of it." 
 
 Now, I wonder why this affectionate little thing 
 didn't take mommer to Italy with her, not exactly as 
 a chaperon, but as a chicken-frier. While this par- 
 ticular brand of fried chicken may be unknown in 
 artistic Italy, it is a positive fact that chickens are 
 quite plentiful there, and with mommer to fry them 
 for her, the little Pittsburg lassie would not have 
 
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 3 
 
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Partaking of Nourishment 
 
 47 
 
 been so home-sick. It is dreadful to long, home- 
 sick-ishly, for anything, but how exceedingly awful 
 it must be to yearn hopelessly for fried chicken in a 
 barbaric city like Venice. How odious it must be 
 to see the uncivilised Italians (she called them 
 Eyetalians) dining when you are simply pining to 
 "eat!" 
 
 I met a youth who hated " the other side " be- 
 cause the buckwheat cakes were so inferior. He was 
 terribly angry, and even threatening about it. He 
 had " eaten " at the Carlton, in London, at Mar- 
 guery's in Paris, at the Bristol in Vienna, and at 
 Bertolini's in Naples, and they actually didn't know 
 " the first thing " about " serving " buckwheat cakes. 
 (I liked to hear him talk about "serving" buck- 
 wheat cakes, because I always think they should be 
 thrown at you.) It was all very well to say that 
 Europe was civilised. It 
 was not. He was sure 
 of it. 
 
 " It seems strange," he 
 said, " but it is a positive 
 fact that the buckwheat 
 cakes I get in Canandai- 
 gua, N. Y., are superior 
 to any that I found in 
 Europe. Gee! I shall 2 
 be glad to get back again. ' 
 Europe's a bunco-game.'' 
 
48 The Great Wet Way 
 
 I tried to draw him out, and to glean some faint 
 idea of the artistic side of his trip. This was im- 
 possible. Europe had been entirely marred for him 
 by its unseemly indifference to buckwheat cakes. If 
 he could have made of buckwheat cakes a casus belli, 
 he would certainly have done so. Of course it was 
 dreadfully galling for the poor boy, but still, he has 
 the remedy in his own hands. He need never move 
 again from the cheering buckwheat cake. 
 
 People who come on board laden down with food 
 
 g^-o 
 
 — on the principle that it is pious to take coals to 
 Newcastle — add immensely to the jollity of the trip. 
 They want you to think that the best an ocean steam- 
 ship can do, isn't good enough for them, and that 
 they can do better. They are most exhilarating. 
 
 I encountered one pleasing old gentleman on board 
 who was freighted with an enormous hamper of red 
 currants. He seemed to live for red currants, — life 
 without them would be but an empty dream. He ap- 
 
Partaking of Nourishment 49 
 
 peared at each meal bearing a plate laden with the 
 red currants that he set ostentatiously before him. 
 At the end of the meal he carried away with him the 
 currants that were left. The company had peaches, 
 nectarines, and the most delicious fruits, for dessert. 
 He wouldn't touch them. He ate his red currants in 
 silent joy — never even passed them round. We all 
 called him " Currants," and to this day I do not 
 know him by any other name. 
 
 Many people who are regarded with awe as being 
 tremendously " wealthy " travel with food. A Stock 
 Exchange magnate and his family published the fact 
 that they were accompanied by their own butter. Yes, 
 they simply could not do without it. He had a valet, 
 and it was the valet's duty to make the butter into 
 " pats " every day, and put a " pat " at the plate of 
 each member of the family in the saloon. The fare 
 on this particular boat was sumptuous. I am quite 
 willing to swear that it was finer than any that the 
 Stock Exchange gentleman got in his own home. It 
 went for nothing. Every member of this ultra-fas- 
 tidious family talked butter, until you wished that 
 such a commodity had never been invented. The 
 valet was anxiously consulted as to whether he 
 thought that the butter would last until they reached 
 New York. I must confess that the valet was most 
 optimistic. He persistently thought it would last. 
 
 Just before the close of the trip, I found myself 
 getting peevish, apprehensive, and nervous. I was 
 
$o The Great Wet Way 
 
 afraid that they were coming to the end of the but- 
 ter, and, honestly, I looked upon such a possibility as 
 a calamity. The butter did last. If it had given 
 out, I made up my mind to move to some other table. 
 I could not have borne to sit idly and watch the bitter 
 — not butter — human grief, the mental agony, and 
 the tense, dry tragedy of those Stock Exchange 
 people if their " pats " had given out. There are 
 some events in life that are too harrowing. 
 
 One disgusted youth, travelling to New York, was 
 wretched because the menu was in French. I suppose 
 that he felt a bit petulant about his pronunciation, 
 and was selfishly anxious to deprive the steward of 
 wholesome, boyish fun. At any rate, when the bill 
 of fare was presented to him, he tossed it angrily 
 aside. He would give no order. 
 "Bring me any old 
 thing ! " he cried, and he 
 never varied that cry. 
 
 To select " any old thing " 
 from a bill of fare that in- 
 JlL eluded every new thing was 
 
 ^^ something of a poser. Stew- 
 
 ards are, fortunately, not unfamiliar with cranks, 
 and the steward on this occasion was an experienced 
 person. He plied the disgruntled one with chops, 
 and the disgruntled one always ate them. Chops are 
 sure, and safe. Chops are a refuge for the gastro- 
 nomically destitute. They respond quite appropri- 
 
Partaking of Nourishment 51 
 
 ately to the idea of " any old thing." This youth 
 was very pleasant indeed, except at meal time. He 
 was affable, smiling, chatty, amusing. 
 
 But his face clouded, his demeanour changed, his 
 geniality vanished as the waiter appeared with the 
 menu. He was a different man; he was Mr. Hyde 
 instead of Dr. Jekyll, as he uttered those contemptu- 
 ous, weary, and heart-broken words: "Bring me 
 any old thing ! " 
 
 Many untutored people in the steamship's saloon 
 do all their ordering at once, and insist that every- 
 thing shall be brought to them at the same time, and 
 arranged symmetrically before them. You see them 
 sitting before a formidable array of plates. This 
 sort of diner can be defined as " a piece of humanity 
 entirely surrounded by food." He has his soup, his 
 fish, his meat, and " six kinds of dessert " all served 
 at once, and draped around his " cover." He is fes- 
 tooned with nourishment. And as though his object 
 in life were to avoid making one dish jealous of the 
 other, he dips into each impartially. He has an ich- 
 thyosaurian stomach, and few preferences. He rev- 
 els in the idea of plenty, and is most merry with his 
 hard-working steward. This diner never misses 
 stewed prunes. He is always careful to get full of 
 prunes. They probably remind him of happy days — 
 long since fled! Prunes are to the majority of un- 
 sophisticated diners what "lights" are to a cat. 
 There are other things, of course — good, useful, di- 
 
52 The Great Wet Way 
 
 gestible, pretty things, but prunes are something wist- 
 ful and essential; they seem to appeal to a better na- 
 ture, to a finer and more exalted outlook. Woe to 
 the ocean liner that sails from port without prunes ! 
 It will never sail pruneless again. The European in- 
 difference to prunes drives many travellers home. 
 While prunes may be obtained abroad, they are not 
 served with the same solemnity and the careful con- 
 sideration that travelling Americans demand. The 
 prune abroad is not a rite, but just a — plum ! 
 
 Sometimes passengers seem quite normal and hu- 
 man until they reach the dining saloon. Then their 
 normality vanishes, and the curiosities of their nature 
 come out for an airing. You never really know a man 
 until you have seen him at table. You may think that 
 you do, but you — don't. I remember crossing with 
 a silk merchant from Passaic, New Jersey, who 
 seemed to be bubbling over with the milk of human 
 kindness — or, at any rate, rustling with its silk. He 
 was one of the liveliest men on board — anxious to 
 know and commune with everybody, and interested in 
 everything. All this was changed in the dining 
 saloon. 
 
 " I want three things every morning," he said to 
 the table steward at the first meal, " and I shall insist 
 upon getting them. Bring me hot tea, hot milk, and 
 a hot cup. Remember those three things : Hot tea, 
 hot milk, hot cup, and see that they are never miss- 
 ing." 
 
Partaking of Nourishment 53 
 
 The table steward showed no surprise. Any table 
 steward who is surprised at anything at sea would be 
 useless. He went away and returned with hot tea, 
 warm milk, and a cold cup. The rage of the silk 
 merchant knew no bounds. Had some dreadful 
 catastrophe happened, he could scarcely have been 
 more upset. 
 
 " How dare you? " he cried indignantly, as he felt 
 all around the cold cup, and put his finger in the milk. 
 " Go heat that cup, and boil that milk — or I'll report 
 you." 
 
 The next morning there was another cyclone. The 
 cup was merely warm, the tea just tepid, and the milk 
 boiling. The irate passenger stormed. We tried to 
 talk to, and soothe him, but he was frantic. He was 
 insane on the subject of hot tea, hot milk, hot cup. 
 Out of the saloon, he could converse agreeably on any 
 topic. He was a good-humoured, genial soul. At 
 luncheon and at dinner he was affability personified, 
 but at breakfast he was a devil rampaging around 
 his mania. 
 
 It grew so awful — for the luckless table steward 
 invariably went wrong — that we used to try to get to 
 the breakfast table late, after the hot tea, hot milk, 
 hot cup melodrama had been acted. Sometimes we 
 arrived in time to find him sitting in silent gloom, 
 glowering. He was plunged in a terrible taciturnity. 
 The cup had been chilly! Often we got there to dis- 
 cover that he was waiting in sickening expectancy for 
 
54 The Great Wet Way 
 
 the tea that had been lacking in fervour. He declined 
 to speak to us. Once I am prepared to testify that I 
 saw tears of vexation coursing down his cheeks. 1 
 tried personal remonstration with the steward. I 
 took him aside, and implored him for all our sakes to 
 be merciful, and to see that the cup was well baked. 
 
 " It's 'ard to 'eat a cup," was his invariable excuse. 
 
 This passenger was travelling alone. He had left 
 his wife and children in Passaic — lucky folks 1 Pos- 
 sibly he was a fond father, and a doting husband — 
 except at breakfast time, that terrifying period when 
 the obsession of hot tea, hot milk, hot cup made a 
 fiend of him. I can imagine his wife saying as she 
 saw his ship sailing away: "Now at last we can 
 un-heat the cupsl " 
 
 Breakfast is a very trying meal anywhere. On 
 board ship it is particularly cranky. Most people 
 feel a trifle fractious after having been mewed up all 
 night in a closet. They are compelled to enter the 
 saloon and talk platitudes under these circumstances. 
 It always pains me to see people dining at breakfast 
 time — partaking hungrily of half a dozen indigesti- 
 ble courses, while I look askance at a cup of coffee. 
 I hate my fellow creatures at breakfast time. I can 
 scarcely conceal my contempt for the slip of a girl 
 who gets away with a cereal, a ham omelette, a beef- 
 steak, buckwheat cakes, fruit, jam, and hot bread, and 
 then complains that she never has an appetite on 
 board ship. I am always itching to insult the portly 
 
Partaking of Nourishment 55 
 
 matron who reels off an order for fish, "kidney 
 stoo," ham-and-eggs, cold tongue, pressed beef, and 
 fancy breads, wondering all the time why she can't 
 enjoy her food like other people! They promise 
 themselves a tonic when they land — a tonic, mind 
 you, not an emetic! 
 
 This sort of thing does not worry me a bit on land. 
 At sea, it always seems indecent, and unfit for publi- 
 cation. Hungry people in the morning look so 
 brazen, and so unashamed. I often wonder why 
 these breakfast-diners do not take wine with their 
 food, or appear in evening dress. They look so silly, 
 in morning garb, eating a hearty dinner for break- 
 fast! A coarse dinner is surely a coarse break- 
 fast. These people are always talking ailments. They 
 dote on ailments. They can discuss the fifty-seven 
 varieties of dyspepsia, and can paint pleasing pictures 
 of life at Carlsbad and Marienbad — those resorts of 
 penitent gluttons. They go everywhere for their 
 health. They are on board for their health. They 
 know the precise effect of different brands of sea-air 
 on their system. This resort is bracing; that is ener- 
 vating; a third is a tonic; a fourth is anti-this-or- 
 the-other. You make a mental list of the places they 
 have never visited, and resolve to visit them. They 
 must be the desirable resorts. 
 
 You meet the weirdest kinds of gastronomic tastes 
 on board ship, and you marvel at the abnormality of 
 seemingly normal men and women. A year ago, 
 
56 The Great Wet Way 
 
 there was a very pretty girl from St. Louis, sitting 
 beside me at table. She was as nice as she was pretty, 
 but she was insane. She was insane on the subject of 
 Camembert cheese. She had it for breakfast; at 
 luncheon she mixed it with her prunes ; at dinner she 
 ) ate it in meringue and with ice-cream. She was very 
 fond of it with jam and marmalade. 
 
 About the third day out, I began to dread Camem- 
 bert cheese. You may say that I need not have 
 
 looked at this girl — nobody asked me to look. 
 
 That is quite true. Camembert cheese, however, can 
 be perceived without the eyes, and usually it is. She 
 was very particular about it. She liked it ripe, and 
 mellow — and at that stage Camembert is at its chat- 
 tiest. She refused to accept it if it were hard and 
 silent. She was a well-bred girl. We used to dis- 
 cuss the classics, while she toyed with the Camembert, 
 and this grew to be somewhat unpleasant. In fact, I 
 began to wish that I had been a plumber, and could 
 have talked drains. Many a time did I endeavour to 
 joke her away from her Camembert fetich. The 
 scheme never worked. She laughed with me, and was 
 jocund and light-hearted, but she was eating Camem- 
 bert cheese until we landed in New York, and is 
 probably eating it now. 
 
 Never expect to escape from the fiend who has 
 three soft-boiled eggs broken into a large glass gob- 
 let, under your very eyes. You will never be able to 
 avoid this barbarian, for he is on board every steam- 
 
Partaking of Nourishment 57 
 
 ship. Sometimes I think that steamship companies 
 engage him just to make passengers feel that they are 
 really at sea. At any rate, he always seems to be 
 actuated by a solemn sense of duty ! 
 
 If you are feeling quite well, the boiled-egg fiend 
 does not suggest such marked criminality; if you are 
 pettishly inclined at breakfast, you cut him dead, and 
 refuse to respond to his perfunctory " Good-morn- 
 ing ! " He orders the three eggs soft-boiled, and 
 then requests the steward to break them into a goblet, 
 while he looks on unabashed. The splash of those 
 eggs as they fall, with a sickening thud, into the gob- 
 let becomes so familiar to you that you would know 
 it anywhere. They are then stirred up with a lump 
 of butter and pepper and salt until the goblet is yel- 
 low, opaque, sticky and hideous. There is triumph on 
 the face of this fiend as he begins his operations — a 
 triumph like that popularly believed to be felt by 
 little Jack Horner, when he put in his thumb, and 
 pulled out a plum, and said "What a good boy 
 ami!" 
 
 I believe in friendship, and suppose that I have as 
 many friends as most men who can afford such luxur- 
 ies. But if I caught my best friend — companion of 
 my childhood's days — associate of my adolescence — 
 sitting before a goblet of stagnant soft-boiled eggs on 
 board ship, I should promptly decide that henceforth 
 we meet as strangers. There are some things that it 
 is difficult to forgive and forget. 
 
58 The Great Wet Way 
 
 One of the tenets of my gastronomic faith is that 
 eggs should never be eaten in public at any time. 
 You may guess that your friend has had eggs for 
 breakfast by the traces they always leave — traces that 
 can never be mistaken. But it is better not to know 
 for sure — not to catch him in flagrante delictu. 
 
 On one of the big German boats, where every meal 
 served in the saloon is a banquet, and where you are 
 plied with all the delicacies that human ingenuity has 
 invented, passengers were confronted with what was 
 called a " Ritz-Carlton restaurant" on the upper deck. 
 People could patronise this restaurant if they cared 
 to do so, by paying enormous prices for the privilege. 
 The fare in the saloon was so sumptuous, however, 
 that you could not conceive of any epicure demanding 
 anything better. But this " Ritz-Carlton restau- 
 rant" was supposed to be better because it involved 
 extra cost. And it was always crowded I One's 
 sense of humour was immensely tickled by the osten- 
 tatious enthusiasm for the " Ritz-Carlton," and the 
 particular pains that the patrons thereof took to let 
 you know that they really " couldn't stand " the 
 saloon. 
 
 " I never did like a general dining-room," said the 
 wife of a big " dry-goods " man (she was big, the 
 man was big, and the " dry-goods " were big) . " One 
 doesn't like to sit with a hungry crowd, all so food-y 
 and oppressive. One loves to be exclusive sometimes. 
 I am taking all my meals at the Ritz-Carlton — even 
 
Partaking of Nourishment 59 
 
 breakfast. Expensive ? Of course. The price keeps 
 the rabble out." 
 
 There were gold knives and forks in this restau- 
 rant; gold cruets, gold fruit-dishes. I do not know 
 if any of the utensils were studded with precious 
 stones, but I daresay that they were. In mid-ocean, 
 the diners in the " Ritz-Carlton " were observed in all 
 the ecstasy of " full evening dress " wending their 
 way along the slippery decks to this Mecca. The 
 women wore low-cut gowns, and huge hats pinnacled 
 with feathers ; the men were arrayed in all the glories 
 of Solomon. On a foggy night in " the roaring for- 
 ties "this struck me as so humorous, that I was happy 
 for the evening. The diners sat for hours in their de- 
 lightful exclusiveness. 
 
 " I love it," one Johnnie confided in me, as he 
 emerged from his floating lobster-palace, to the cold, 
 wet, wobbly deck. " It makes me think that I'm in 
 dear old Forty-Second Street, after the show." 
 
 " Why do you bother to go three thousand miles 
 away from dear old Forty-Second Street, if you love 
 it so, and you own such an affectionate nature?" I 
 ventured to ask. 
 
 " Just to love it all the more when I return to it," 
 he said. " Absence makes the heart grow fonder, 
 and in the meantime, this reminds me of it. It is so 
 like it — the lights, the beautifully gowned women, 
 the jewels, the flowers, the music, and the civili- 
 sation." 
 
6o The Great Wet Way 
 
 The civilisation! I gasped. Here was a human 
 object who could find no grandeur in the imprecations 
 of the usually indignant Atlantic ; who could weave no 
 imaginings from the endless waste of sky and sea in 
 all their variations; who could think no marvels of 
 the human skill that had made possible this vast asso- 
 ciation of men and women in the midst of this heav- 
 ing expanse of water. Here was a mental pigmy 
 whose only object in travel was to awaken memories 
 of Forty-Second Street, and whose soul soared no 
 higher than a lobster palace ! 
 
 The restaurant on this ship brought out eccentrici- 
 ties in a thick rash. There were passengers on board 
 who used to peep in awe through the windows of the 
 " Ritz-Carlton restaurant," and talk in amazement 
 of its garish splendours. There were first-cabin pas- 
 sengers who said they had the " steerage feeling " be- 
 cause they were doomed to the mere banquets in the 
 saloon, where there were no gold dishes, no gold 
 cruets, no gold fruit plates. Many who had paid 
 fabulous prices for accommodation felt like beggars 
 as they watched the glitter of luxury in this " latest 
 innovation." Nobody amounted to anything unless 
 he had " shown himself " at the " Ritz-Carlton." 
 The restaurant established another " class," and a 
 very rigidly defined class. There were intellectual 
 people on this ship — poets, dramatists, novelists, lec- 
 turers. They were quite " out of it." They did not 
 take their meals from gold plates in the " Ritz-Carl- 
 
Partaking of Nourishment 61 
 
 ton." They partook of a feeble dinner of twelve 
 courses in the meagre dining-room. They were hum- 
 ble. They felt the sting of their humility. 
 
 There were even " Ritz-Carlton " children who 
 wouldn't condescend to " play " with mere saloon 
 children. They were delightful little snobs. The 
 " Ritz-Carlton " juveniles were so atrociously funny 
 that I am hoping I may meet some of them when they 
 have grown up. They will assuredly be gorgeously 
 entertaining. These mites talked of nothing but 
 money and gold and diamonds. One sweet little girl 
 had been promised a hundred dollars if she abstained 
 from eating candy during the trip — instead of being 
 threatened with a good spanking if she did eat it. 
 
 And not very far from this gathering of obtrusive 
 money-vulgarians was the steerage, with its herd of 
 crushed yet hopeful exiles ; its mob of misery-steeped 
 wretches ; its gangs of palpitating expatriates — a dull, 
 drab streak of poverty on a luminous picture of lurid 
 luxury. The contrast was so sharp that it arose and 
 smote you. There was the one extreme and there 
 was the other — and which was the more pitiful? 
 They were both collected on the same bits of wood 
 and iron ; both tossed by the same waves and billows 
 at the same time — yet as distant as though belonging 
 to two different worlds. Mercifully separated, how- 
 ever ! The Johnnie who hankered for Forty-Second 
 Street could not see the burly Teuton at the other end 
 of the boat, anxious to carve a belated career for him- 
 
62 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 self out of the marble blocks of the New World. The 
 dingy, soiled and tousled Russian, crouched in his 
 niche in the steerage, did not perceive his proximity 
 to the loiterer in " full evening dress " clamouring for 
 the garishness of metropolitan inertia on an ocean 
 steamship. They were so near, but yet so far. 
 
 Comedy and tragedy on the ocean-liner, as in real 
 life, jostle each other perpetually. They tread on 
 each other's corns even in the dining saloon, where 
 you would be willing to swear that humour alone 
 exists in gayest form. 
 
IV 
 WHO'S WHO ON BOARD 
 
 HE passenger list is 
 an important document 
 setting forth barely 
 and with laconic precis- 
 ion the names of your 
 associates on the ocean 
 trip. All biographical 
 details are withheld 
 so that you are kept 
 busy during the entire 
 voyage ferreting them 
 out. The passenger 
 list is a very old institution, and it has not kept 
 pace with modern improvements. It is really the 
 same to-day as it was twenty years ago — the same un- 
 communicative and unsatisfactory chronicle of mere 
 names. Now, if you read your Baedeker, you will 
 discover that the compiler of that flippant and excit- 
 ing record is not satisfied with merely recording the 
 names of the hotels in the towns of visited countries, 
 and leaving you in hopeless befuddlement at the end- 
 less array of resting-places. Baedeker places an as- 
 terisk opposite each hotel that it guarantees to be 
 first-class. That, of course, is a great relief. You 
 
64 The Great Wet Way 
 
 read that Baedeker declares a certain hotel to be first- 
 class and — er — you don't go there. 
 
 But on the passenger list no names are asterisked. 
 The steamship companies do not guarantee the qual- 
 ity of their passengers, which it would be an easy 
 thing to do. Instead of consulting a judicious 
 " Who's Who " and carefully labelling any pas- 
 sengers who have done anything that wasn't worth 
 doing, they pay no attention to pedigree or to social 
 standing. The passenger list is distinctly inferior to 
 Baedeker. It is very cold, dispassionate, and formal. 
 The very best people are set down cheek-by-jowl with 
 the nobodies. There is not a line on any passenger 
 list to show that Mr. Jones has paid fifteen hundred 
 dollars for a suite on the upper deck. His name is as 
 unmarked as is that of Mr. Smith who is occupying a 
 berth in a stateroom containing four, and who is pay- 
 ing the minimum rate. Such democracy is of course 
 deplorable. At the opera, for instance, you know un- 
 erringly where anybody of any consequence is sitting. 
 Exclusive people are properly treated — by having 
 their exclusiveness painlessly removed. But on an 
 ocean-liner you can be a multi-millionaire, if you like, 
 and the passenger list will not announce the fact. 
 
 This is, naturally, very galling. It is unbearable. 
 What is the use of being anybody if nobody knows 
 it ? Why extract a week from the delightful publicity 
 of land-life, and sink it in the obscurity of ocean life? 
 Lights that are hidden under bushels are very sad 
 
Who's Who on Board 65 
 
 lights indeed. To be nobody for a whole week is 
 dispiriting. 
 
 However, efforts have been made to circumvent the 
 passenger list, and with some show of success. By 
 means of these well-conceived efforts it is possible to 
 obtain some faint inkling of the value of your asso- 
 ciates. You see on the passenger list, for instance: 
 " Mr. and Mrs. Robinson, and three children," and 
 you sniff contemptuously at the bald and poverty- 
 stricken announcement, for below, you discover some- 
 thing far more winning, and worth while, in this 
 style : 
 
 Mr. Ponsonby-Snooks 
 
 and valet 
 Mrs. Ponsonby-Snooks 
 
 and maid 
 Miss Margaret Ponsonby-Snooks 
 Miss Pianjela Ponsonby-Snooks 
 Master Ormsby Ponsonby-Snooks 
 
 and two nurses 
 
 and governess. 
 
 Now that catches your eye immediately. You can- 
 not overlook it. It has warmth, colour, fervour, and 
 appreciation. It is " getting even " with the pas- 
 senger list, with a vengeance. Mr. Ponsonby-Snooks, 
 having tripped across the Atlantic for years, has real- 
 ised of course that something must be done, for his 
 wife's sake, and for the sake of those dear children, 
 on whose transparent, juvenile minds impressions are 
 made that can never be erased. Your first day, 
 
66 The Great Wet Way 
 
 as the steamer settles down to business, is to sort out 
 the Ponsonby-Snookses, as important people worth 
 cultivating, if they will allow you to cultivate them. 
 You forget " Mr. and Mrs. Robinson and three chil- 
 dren " who are plebeian enough to cross the ocean 
 without maids and valets — who, in fact, are " doing 
 the thing " cheaply, which is always contemptible in 
 the eyes of those who are doing it, perhaps, more 
 cheaply. 
 
 It is, of course, rather difficult to get the Ponsonby- 
 Snooks party properly sifted out. Perhaps you spend 
 an entire morning talking with the passenger whom 
 you have labelled " Ponsonby-Snooks "; you have de- 
 cided that he is delightfully free-and-easy, and charm- 
 ingly democratic for one so potent, when it is borne in 
 upon you that the person you have buttonholed is Mr. 
 Ponsonby-Snooks' valet. This is irritating, and you 
 promptly cut the valet, who is inclined to be fearfully 
 friendly next time you meet him on deck. The effort 
 to discover Mrs. Ponsonby-Snooks may be equally 
 trying. After having promenaded the deck all morn- 
 ing with the lady — as you fondly thought — being 
 careful to let all the other passengers see you, it gets 
 on your nerves to learn that you have been prowling 
 around with the nurse. There is nothing more pros- 
 trating to the really democratic mind! 
 
 You are quite sure. that you are no snob, but you 
 do like to know the best people. You are all 
 crowded together on an ocean steamer, and there is 
 
Who's Who on Board 67 
 
 no reason on earth why you should not improve the 
 shining hour. If you become very friendly with them 
 at sea, you will be able to visit them on land. This 
 exquisite fallacy is always rife on an Atlantic liner. 
 It is exploded every time you meet your chatty sea- 
 friends in town, and they cut you as dead as a door- 
 nail, but it grows again — like a wart — next time you 
 cross. 
 
 People with titles of any kind, wear them pleas- 
 ingly on the steamship. There is the baronet, whose 
 handle comes out well on the list, and there are all 
 sorts of American titles. There is the " Hon." So- 
 and-So, which is misleading but nice; there are 
 "Judge" and "Colonel" and "General" and 
 " Doctor." The last is lowest in the social scale, for 
 it may apply to a chiropodist, or to an ordinary den- 
 tist, but is distinctly better than nothing at all on a 
 passenger list that is depressingly mute on the subject 
 of calling and standing. 
 
 For two whole days the passengers are busy with 
 the passenger list. They sit poring over it, and try- 
 ing to " place " people. Often as you pass, you hear 
 somebody say, " Oh, that must be So-and-So," and a 
 mark is made opposite your name. Your secret is 
 discovered. You see people running around and 
 reading the labels on unoccupied steamer-chairs, and 
 sometimes waiting until the occupants thereof appear. 
 If you should happen to be sitting in the " Judge's " 
 steamer-chair, you will be looked upon as the 
 
68 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 " Judge " until that gentleman appears to rout you 
 out. 
 
 A great difficulty is that labels on steamer-chairs 
 are hidden when people are sitting on them. This is 
 a bitter disappointment. You cannot go up to a per- 
 fect stranger and say, " Kindly move your head as I 
 want to see who you are." You are obliged to wait 
 until meal-time, when he usually goes below. When 
 there is a crowd on board, this is very annoying. I 
 do not say that it is impossible, for nothing is impos- 
 sible if you set your mind to it. If steamship com- 
 panies cared to do the right thing, they would have 
 the legend on each steamer-chair placed high above 
 the head of the passenger — and illuminated at night. 
 This innovation would be dearly appreciated by a 
 crowd that is largely composed of the type popularly 
 known as " rubberneck." 
 
 It is wonderful how quickly passenger gossip travels 
 on the liner. A mere hint as to the identity of a cer- 
 tain person is known in a few minutes from one end 
 of the ship to the other. Unintentionally, you your- 
 
Who's Who on Board 69 
 
 self may spread gossip, and realise afterwards your 
 infamy. I saw a young couple very much engrossed 
 in each other. Her wedding ring looked new, and 
 just for the sake of saying something, I remarked to 
 a comrade, " Look at that honeymoon couple. They 
 seem happy." 
 
 That man and woman had never done me any 
 harm. Yet I had labelled them. All that morning, 
 nobody talked of anything but that honeymoon 
 couple. People got up, and walked past them just 
 to take a look. All sorts of romances were woven 
 around them. She was an heiress, and he was elop- 
 ing with her. Everybody remembered reading about 
 them in the papers the day before we sailed. Their 
 case was threshed out for hours. Unfortunately they 
 were not honeymooners. She was married, with a 
 husband on board, ill in his stateroom. He was simi- 
 larly situated with an indisposed wife. The four of 
 them were all travelling together, and the non-ill 
 ones were making the best of the situation. They 
 had to explain this. The explanation was forced 
 upon them by the " rubbernecks," instigated by my 
 thoughtless stupidity! 
 
 Honeymoon couples are great boons to the ocean 
 traveller. All the world loves a lover, and at sea all 
 the world leads him a nice life! One would think 
 that sensible honeymooners — provided that they exist 
 ■ — would avoid the ocean steamer like a plague. If 
 they reason at all, they probably argue that a week 
 
yo The Great Wet Way . 
 
 spent away from everybody they know will be recrea- 
 tive and appropriate. They see themselves among a 
 crowd of strangers, and their newly wedded hearts 
 rejoice and are glad at the sweet idea. But the peo- 
 ple they know are not half as bad as the people they 
 don't know. Once let their secret be guessed — and 
 are there any honeymooners who do not look the 
 part? — and they are watched and criticised and gos- 
 siped about until land puts them out of their misery. 
 If he leaves her for a minute, his love is growing cold; 
 if she chats with an unsuspecting passenger, she is a 
 flirt who will never settle down ; if he sleeps happily 
 in his steamer-chair by her side, he is tiring of her; if 
 she yawns at the endlessness of the day, married life 
 is beginning to pall ; if his voice be raised as he talks 
 to her (he may be advising her to try and eat some- 
 thing at luncheon) , he is developing into the usual cut- 
 and-dried husband; if she be too indisposed to care 
 much how she looks, she is learning how to disen- 
 chant a husband; if he doesn't call her " tootsy," he is 
 a cold-blooded wretch; if she looks serious and 
 gloomy, she is learning that marriage is a failure. 
 
 One's heart bleeds for the honeymooners on board 
 ship, and there are so many of them, all trying to look 
 usual, and never succeeding. In a crowded town, 
 their lot would be a happier one than it is on the ship, 
 where people are aching for romance, and are bound 
 to weave something of the sort around the honey- 
 mooners. They analyse the poor young bride's 
 
s 
 
 CD 
 
 re 
 a, 
 
 "re 
 
 C 
 re 
 
 Oh 
 
 O 
 
 bO 
 
 <u 
 
 "a, 
 
 o 
 Oh 
 
 ,:/ v 
 
Who's Who on Board 71 
 
 " trousseau," and wonder what sort of clothes she 
 will wear when he has to pay for them ; they are anx- 
 ious to know when he will discover that she dyes her 
 hair and makes up her face; he must have married 
 her for her money; or she took him because he was 
 her last chance. 
 
 The honeymooners cannot please the passengers. 
 Sometimes, I really think that they try. Gossip runs 
 high, and it is inexhaustible. If the honeymooners 
 own important names, and their wedding has been 
 chronicled in the daily papers, people rack their 
 brains to recall the details. Poor honeymooners ! The 
 storm rages around them, and they cannot escape it. 
 There is no shelter. If they talk to stray people, 
 they are pestered with questions, and their remarks 
 are reported to the other passengers. We know all 
 that there is to know about them, and imagine the rest. 
 Kind passengers smile affectionately at them; even 
 the Captain is subdued with gentle deference. The 
 Captain feels responsible for this honeymoon, and he 
 is awfully nice and attentive. The purser and the 
 doctor — sometimes brusque — are never brusque to 
 the honeymooners. They are the ship's " stars," 
 compelled to twinkle, when they would love to be 
 obscured by some thick, protecting cloud. 
 
 Honeymooners are treated as though they were in- 
 valids, or people with some fatal disease. Passengers 
 could not possibly be more attentive to unfortunates 
 irrevocably afflicted with some incurable malady than 
 
72 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 they are to the honeymooners. The honeymooners 
 have run away from all their old friends in quest of 
 seclusion. They find themselves confronted with new 
 ones, who are terribly exacting, and whom they can- 
 not flout. For while you can — and do — give your 
 old friend a piece of your mind, you may not be 
 candid with the new one. It is the new friend that 
 makes the honeymooners fractious. 
 
 The important person on board ship, whose im- 
 portance has not been passenger-listed, is not satis- 
 fied to remain unknown for seven whole days. He 
 may have undertaken the trip for rest — he says he 
 has — but is not restful to be unrecognised. It is dis- 
 tinctly annoying, — one's mind must be serene. He 
 has to do all the work that the steamship company 
 should have done for him. He selects a gossipy 
 passenger — which is not as difficult 
 as you might think — and to this pas- 
 senger he tells the story of his life. 
 He conceals nothing, and does him- 
 self full justice. This is a duty that 
 he owes to himself. The information 
 thus obtained is immediately spread 
 all over the ship, and the important 
 person is able to settle down to mere 
 enjoyment. He becomes deliciously 
 reticent and modest with passengers, 
 wonders how they know so much 
 about him, and declares that now-a- 
 
Who's Who on Board 
 
 73 
 
 days it seems quite 
 impossible to travel 
 incog! 
 
 The lady who has 
 written novels of 
 which you have 
 never heard is much 
 sought after on 
 board ship. The news of her alluring avocation 
 reaches you quickly. You ascribe the fact that you 
 have never heard of her novels to some oversight. 
 Later on, she tells you that she has not been " prop- 
 erly advertised," and has no " head for business." 
 The passengers gaze upon her with awe. Although 
 everybody writes novels, tradition demands the awe 
 that was called forth in the time when everybody 
 didn't. The passengers actually begin to believe that 
 they have read some of the books that she has 
 never written, and they are very anxious to read 
 her next, which she will never write. This lady 
 is always seen taking notes for her new book. 
 She poses on deck with a sheet of paper and a pencil. 
 She becomes very popular, for she tells every pas- 
 senger that he is going to be one of the characters in 
 her new novel. This makes a great hit. So would 
 her book, if every passenger appeared in it. Long 
 before we land the lady enjoys a tremendous vogue; 
 the stewards dance attendance upon her, and the 
 officers say " Good-morning " when they see her. 
 
74 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 You can generally tell important passengers by the 
 demeanour of the officers. The doctor and the pur- 
 ser doff their caps and say, " Nice day," to important 
 passengers. Importance is a good thing, say what 
 you will, and it is easy to acquire on the ocean, where 
 you practically begin life afresh, leaving your hideous 
 past, your unadmiring friends, and your unappre- 
 ciative relatives on shore. The absence of relatives 
 gives a new zest to life. Who can be important with 
 a set of abominable relatives, all with hatefully re- 
 tentive memories, determined to keep a man down — 
 where he belongs ? 
 
 Then there is the playwright with a trunk full of 
 plays that have never been produced. He becomes, 
 for the first time in his life, poor chap, quite bril- 
 liantly important. He knows all the managers, and 
 calls them all by their Chris- 
 tian names. Every manager is 
 just crazy to produce his plays, 
 but they will not agree to his 
 terms. He sets a high price up- 
 on himself, and what man who 
 is worth his salt doesn't? At 
 the concert he makes a speech, 
 and is introduced by the chair- 
 man, as " The eminent play- 
 wright in our midst." Young 
 girls on board, with stage 
 aspirations, sit by him, and 
 
Who's Who on Board 75 
 
 coax him to write parts for them in his next play. On 
 one occasion a wag buttonholed this unproduced 
 playwright, and offered him a brilliant suggestion. 
 The dramatist had been very loquacious on the sub- 
 ject of his trunk full of plays, all good in their way. 
 
 " You want to make money? " said the wag insin- 
 uatingly. " Well, I'll tell you how. Sell your plays 
 cheap, and realise immediately. You have probably 
 written 100,000 plays. Sell them at a dollar apiece. 
 That will bring you in $100,000, which is a goodly 
 sum." 
 
 Do not imagine, however, that the most important 
 people on board are those that chat with the pas- 
 sengers. That is not so. The great attraction on the 
 steamer is the exclusive passenger who will have noth- 
 ing to do with promiscuous anybodies. The exclusive 
 passenger really cannot associate, you know, with any 
 Tom, Dick, or Harry to whom he has not been 
 formally introduced. He is generally one of a party, 
 and the members of this party hold themselves aloof 
 from the " dreadful people " around. 
 
 The exclusive passenger fails to notice you as you 
 pass by. He is in a great hurry to get nowhere, and 
 walks very quickly, with 'nothing in view. He sits 
 with his exclusive tribe, and takes no part in any of 
 the ship's proceedings. You hear that he is a mil- 
 lionaire, and are delighted. It is nice to be on the 
 ship with millionaires, even if they snub you. Or, 
 you learn that he is one of the " Four Hundred," and 
 
7 6 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 you are charmed. The women in the party wear 
 dingy clothes, to emphasise the fact that their tem- 
 porary and undesired associates are not worth dress- 
 ing for; the men are equally abstemious in the matter 
 of apparel. 
 
 I sat opposite one of the alleged members of the 
 " Four Hundred " at meals during one trip. She was 
 very haughty. On my right side was a " variety " 
 lady, covered with rouge and paste diamonds, who 
 always ordered " six kinds of dessert " at the same 
 time, and was very hungry. The society lady looked 
 
 at us both as though we were mere girls. Sitting so 
 close to the " variety " lady, I suppose that the glow 
 of her rouge suffused me; at any rate, I seemed to 
 be with her, and I was punished accordingly. Once 
 I said " Good-morning," but it was not heard. 
 
 The society lady used to hold forth to the com- 
 panion on her right, one of her " set." Her great 
 
Who's Who on Board 77 
 
 topic of conversation was the way in which grand- 
 mother was accustomed to eat bananas. Grand- 
 mamma divided the skin by four cuts, and made a 
 sort of water-lily of the banana. 
 
 The rouged " variety " lady, who would have hated 
 to discuss her grandmother, if she had ever owned 
 one, always looked most uncomfortable. She 
 listened in awe. It seemed wonderful to her to hear 
 of this great lady's grandmother. I told her that, 
 in all probability, this particular grandmother took in 
 washing, and possibly ate the skins of the bananas in 
 her healthy hunger, but she did not think I was at all 
 funny. She watched the society dame furtively, and 
 tried to make a hit with her by putting on more rouge 
 and paste diamonds at every meal. It was no good. 
 The haughty lady was completely hedged in by her 
 own exclusiveness, and would never even pass us the 
 mustard ! We certainly did not look good to her. Nor 
 did we look anything at all. She ignored us utterly, as 
 people who had never been able to afford the cosy 
 luxury of a nice dead grandmother. 
 
 The aristocracy of money counts for nearly every- 
 thing on board, and as it is so easy to be a millionaire 
 for seven days, I can never understand why every- 
 body is not aristocratic. On land, of course, it is dif- 
 ferent, but at sea you can be as rich as you say you 
 are. Moreover, you tell so many fibs on the ocean, that 
 one more or less can make no difference. It is no use 
 being poor. It is silly. Nobody wants you to be 
 poor. It is quite unnecessary. Be rich the instant you 
 
78 The Great Wet Way 
 
 cross the gangplank; your creditors 
 cannot get at you; your bank state- 
 ment cannot reach you ; you cannot be 
 undone for you are undunned ! Spread 
 vj/ the report that you are " simply roll- 
 ing," and all the aristocratic democrats 
 will love you, and make your trip one 
 glad song. It is the only way in which 
 you will ever get to know the exclusive people on 
 board, or savour the delights of affluence. Moreover, 
 you have all your land-life in which to be poor. 
 
 Exclusive people often have children. This may 
 not be stylish, but they have. The exclusive child 
 never plays with the other children. 
 
 " Mother told me not to speak to anybody," it 
 says, with adorable candour, and it refuses all offers 
 of candy. It is a nice little thing. 
 
 The exclusive people seem to have a most misera- 
 ble time enjoying themselves. They do not talk much 
 among themselves. They seem to be studying us 
 all, as we study the steerage. They have never seen 
 anything quite like us before. If we are jolly, they 
 look shocked and bored. They are not interested in 
 anything at all, except the Captain. They appear to 
 have " secrets " with the Captain. They sit at the 
 Captain's table, always. I have never yet discovered 
 how exclusive people manage it, but they are always 
 comfortably settled at the Captain's table. They ap- 
 pear to be known intuitively, and honoured with seats 
 
Who's Who on Board 79 
 
 near the king of the ship. Possibly they give their 
 pedigree to the company when they buy their tickets. 
 It has always been a mystery to me. 
 
 The Captain is usually a very jolly fellow, and a 
 nice companion, and one always feels sorry that he 
 has to entertain the exclusive people. It must be a 
 trying ordeal. Sometimes he seems to wriggle out of 
 it, but not often. They talk to him very affably, and 
 he probably knows more about their grandmothers 
 than the grandmothers ever knew. A Captain's life 
 is not all beer and skittles. He may cherish a secret 
 yearning for the rougey-cheeked variety artist, but 
 cruel convention ties him to the lady whose grand- 
 mother's specialty was peeling bananas. 
 
 Sometimes, and not at all infrequently, the de- 
 lightful odour of " scandal " is scented on board, and 
 then we do enjoy ourselves. It is whispered that a 
 certain passenger is no better than she ought to be, 
 and then we do sit up and notice. The poor thing 
 happens to have high spirits, and she declines to 
 mope. An awful rumour is spread that she smokes 
 in her stateroom. Somebody passed by her cabin, 
 and detected the tell-tale cigarette in the process of 
 being whiffed. Also (and this is whispered in dead 
 secrecy) the steward has been seen carrying cocktails 
 to her room. We are all on the qui vive. What 
 shall we do? Shall we warn people? Shall we 
 cut her dead? The New England spinster is for im- 
 mediate action. She feels that she owes it to herself 
 
80 The Great Wet Way 
 
 and to Massachusetts. Of course, the refractory pas- 
 senger is a foreigner. American women do not 
 smoke or drink cocktails. They all say so, therefore 
 it must be true. The situation is exciting. 
 
 The object of this discussion is contemptuously 
 treated by all the women. She is consequently forced 
 to devote all her time to the men, which must be fear- 
 fully galling. They flock round her banner, and one 
 would actually think that she liked it. She positively 
 seems to do so. She talks, and laughs, and prome- 
 nades the deck, and has no unoccupied time at all 
 which must be really dreadful. The lips of the 
 women curl as they see her. The creature is un- 
 abashed. The New England spinster says that she 
 wouldn't be in her boots for worlds! As the New 
 England spinster squeezes into a 
 No. 7, and the merry lady is loose 
 in a No. 3, this appears to be an 
 unnecessary statement. It is of 
 course merely metaphorical. 
 The merry lady gives the ship 
 I. something to talk about, and the 
 ship is really grateful, though it 
 doesn't know it. There is nothing 
 duller than a crossing without scan- 
 dal, and among the many innova- 
 tions that, I trust, the steamship 
 companies will introduce, is the self- 
 raising scandal that can be enjoyed 
 
Who's Who on Board 81 
 
 without any effort of the imagination. It is some- 
 times difficult to brew scandal among people who are 
 usually on their best behaviour, and then passengers 
 are at a dead loss. 
 
 Widows are awfully nice to have on board. The 
 j oiliest people on the boat are widows, and at sea 
 they are particularly attractive. At sea, also, they 
 are invariably " wealthy widows." You never hear 
 of a transatlantic widow who is poor. She is al- 
 ways living on her ample income, and is free from 
 all care. If you cannot weave a little scandal around 
 the wealthy widow, then you are no good at it at all. 
 You are quite lacking in imagination. Widowhood 
 gives a woman a cachet on the ocean steamer that 
 nothing else could possibly give her, and it is her own 
 fault if she does not enjoy herself. As soon as the 
 women passengers start wondering whether she has 
 ever really been married — and that is but a matter 
 of a few hours — the widow realises that the trip is 
 going to be nice. 
 
 Maids and valets are very useful on board, as soon 
 as they recover from mal de mer. (They are usually 
 very ill, and for a long time.) They are useful, be- 
 cause they talk. They are funds of enticing informa- 
 tion, especially when they belong to the exclusive peo- 
 ple — and they generally do. The mistress says noth- 
 ing, but the maid tells the truth! The master is 
 silent, but the valet discloses all that it is necessary to 
 know ! On one trip there was a singularly exclusive 
 
82 The Great Wet Way 
 
 lady on board, and she despised us all. But 
 before we landed we knew how much rent she paid, 
 what her meat bills were, who catered for her well- 
 known dinners, and whether she was good to her 
 mother. We knew, furthermore, that she often had 
 her clothes dyed; that when she was alone with her 
 husband, they never partook of anything more luxu- 
 rious than chops for dinner; that her "home life" 
 was very monotonous, and that she was really bored 
 to death. 
 
 The valet and the maid vied with each other in 
 delivering these choice bits of information. It would 
 be worth the while of any writer of " society news " 
 to cross the ocean. The salt air seems to inspire the 
 maids and valets. I have heard stories on the ship 
 worth " scare heads " in any newspaper. The valets 
 and maids travel first-class, and time hangs heavily on 
 their hands. They mingle with the other passengers 
 and are marvellously friendly. At first- they conceal 
 their calling, but when concealment is no longer pos- 
 sible, they make the best of it — like the wronged 
 heroine in melodrama. Somehow or other, one 
 can't help drawing them out — at least I can't, though 
 I know it is most reprehensible — and when once 
 started, they are as gods knowing good and evil. It is 
 shameful to listen to their stories, and there is no 
 excuse for it. Still, one does feel more cheerful when 
 it is positively asserted by the gentle maid that the 
 haughty dame, with the lorgnette, who has been 
 
Who's Who on Board 83 
 
 snubbing everybody, sells all her old clothes that 
 won't dye, and hits her husband when she is feeling 
 lively. It seems like the eternal justice of things. 
 And after all, is it shameful? On land, we read such 
 things, acquired in the same way. At sea, we ac- 
 quire them for ourselves. This is better sport. It 
 is the difference between buying nuts already cracked 
 and cracking them for yourself. Nurses and paid 
 companions are not of much use on board — I mean, 
 of course, to the passengers. They cannot talk, be- 
 cause they are always- with their charges. It seems 
 a pity. They look as though they could talk, but 
 their time is always taken up most inconsiderately. 
 What becomes of all the dear friends you meet on 
 board? Goodness only knows. For seven days you 
 have been so vitally interested in them, so keenly at- 
 tentive to everything they had to say, that you are 
 firmly convinced you can never quite get along with- 
 out them. You have their card, and they have yours. 
 The exchange of visiting cards on an ocean steamer 
 is a business in itself. Yet 
 you rarely see them again. 
 You think of them differ- 
 ently as soon as you are 
 landed. They are myths 
 and legends of the phan- 
 tom week that you spent 
 on board — a week that 
 seems like a dead lapse in 
 
84 The Great Wet Way 
 
 a busy life. They are ghosts, unsubstantial pictures, 
 dream sketches — very rarely realities. They peopled 
 a few strange days that were lopped from your 
 activity. 
 
 You find their cards in some forgotten drawer, and 
 you try to recall them. It is like the effort to re- 
 member a dream. If you saw them again you would 
 think of billows, and steamer-chairs, and rugs. They 
 fade, like photographic proofs. They become misty 
 and indistinct. You discover an old passenger list, 
 and wonder " who's who." Many of these people, 
 so important for seven days, are now unrecognisable. 
 The vast struggle to be somebody on an ocean 
 steamer is not unlike the vaster struggle of real life 
 on land. And it is perhaps just as bootless, just 
 as foolish, and just as unstable. At the end of a 
 week the greatest personage on the steamer, whom 
 you have watched and studied incessantly, who has 
 given zest to your trip and food to your mind, is 
 just hallucination! 
 
MAL DE MER 
 
 N land, people 
 are not mortally 
 ashamed of their ail- 
 ments. They do not 
 hush up their colds, 
 their head-aches, their 
 tooth-aches, their dys- 
 pepsia, and their nerv- 
 ous prostration. On 
 the contrary, they seem 
 rather proud of them. 
 They like to discuss 
 them, to gloat over 
 them, and to make the 
 most of them. They 
 analyse every symptom, and are very much in- 
 terested. You frequently meet friends who talk of 
 nothing else but their health disturbances. You can 
 scarcely get in a word edgeways, and it often happens 
 that you rather envy them. You are so prosaically 
 well, and they are so entertainingly ill! It is pos- 
 sible to get the history of a bad cold, from its in- 
 ception to its conclusion. Even doctors cater to the 
 
 85 
 
86 The Great Wet Way 
 
 prevailing fancy for ailments. They come to see 
 you with delightful stories of " cases " they have 
 just left, or of patients to whom they are going. 
 
 In fact, on land, fluctuations in health are topics of 
 conversation, and give you those pleasant thrills that 
 vary the monotony of life. 
 
 On the Atlantic Ocean all this is changed. There 
 is an ailment that is peculiar to the steamship, 
 tremendously popular, and full of all sorts of possi- 
 bilities and kaleidoscopic combinations. Few escape 
 it entirely. On land, if such an ailment were pos- 
 sible, it would be a delicious subject for eloquent 
 comment, and the newspapers would have columns 
 about it. At sea, by some strange Atlantic freak, it 
 is a theme that is tabooed. Its victims are ashamed 
 of it. They try to conceal it. They make all sorts 
 of excuses when discovered in its throes. Some 
 regard it as a joke, and tease the unfortunates who 
 succumb to it. Nobody is ever proud of it. It is 
 never cherished as a kind of household pet — like 
 influenza, or rheumatism, and the ever-popular 
 malaria. Yet when you have it, you wish that you 
 had never been born, and are perfectly convinced that 
 you are about to die. I refer, of course, to seasick- 
 ness, which I shall henceforth mention as mal de 
 mer, because I think that term is more stylish, and 
 far less objectionable. 
 
 I have met men on land who positively insisted 
 upon being credited with a dangerous cold. They 
 
Mai de Mer 
 
 87 
 
 seemed to hanker for it. They have glared at me 
 when I told them how well they were looking. If I 
 had hurled insults at them they could not have been 
 more indignant. I should never have guessed that 
 they had anything the matter with them. Yet these 
 men, caught in the very act of mat de mer, will lie 
 like troopers. They will swear that there is nothing 
 amiss with them — more than a slight discomfort due 
 to the fatigue of " getting away." They will change 
 the subject immediately, and will look as sheepish 
 and abashed as if they had been detected in the act 
 of committing some particularly contemptible offence. 
 You miss your best friend at the ship's luncheon — 
 your most confidential friend, who on land will make 
 a bid for your sympathy if he suffers from a twitching 
 eyelid. You are perfectly aware that the poor chap 
 is laid low by mal de mer, for you had noticed at 
 breakfast that he 
 grew pale when the 
 steward placed two 
 thoroughly virtuous 
 eggs before him, 
 and that he com- 
 plained bitterly 
 about all the 
 food. But when 
 you meet him later, 
 he has nothing to 
 say. H e appears 
 
88 The Great Wet Way 
 
 to shelter some guilty secret. He has the mien of a 
 conscience-racked forger, and the embarrassed air of 
 a suspected embezzler. He seems to dread being 
 questioned. 
 
 " Feel better, old chap? " you ask. After all, you 
 cannot be so hard-hearted as to omit the enquiry. 
 
 He fires up. " Nothing on earth the matter with 
 me," he declares. " I don't know what you mean. 
 I didn't come to luncheon because I had some matters 
 to attend to in my stateroom. I never felt as fit in my 
 life. Why— don't I look all right?" 
 
 His face is a tender shade of green, and his eyes 
 have lost their lustre. There is a wistful, melancholy 
 lurking around the corners of his mouth, and you 
 notice that his hands tremble. Still, you feel obliged 
 to tell him that he certainly does look extremely well, 
 and he waits for this. On land, if you perjured your 
 soul so crudely, he would be most disgusted; but at 
 sea, he has a horror of the truth. 
 
 The jolly youth who just before the boat sails is 
 conspicuously on deck with a large black cigar in his 
 mouth, and merry jest for everybody on his lips, 
 whose first meal is enormous, and whose sense of 
 humour is uproarious, is soon upset by mal de mer. 
 Poor ladl You notice that the large and terrifying 
 black cigar is speedily eliminated from his make-up ; 
 that the easy jest has disappeared, and that the up- 
 roarious vein of humour has been replaced by a mood 
 of tragedy. The bloom of youth has gone from his 
 
Mai de Mer 89 
 
 cheeks ; his brow is puckered as though 
 in anxious thought, and his eyelids 
 droop. When the gong sounds for* 
 the second meal, you do not see himj. 
 bound from his steamer-chair in juve- 
 nile alacrity. The poor boy has a sure 
 case of mal de mer. 
 
 " Come on, Tom," says his little sister, who is as 
 right as a trivet, " the gong has sounded, and I'm as 
 hungry as a hunter. I'm going to have some fricasseed 
 chicken, sweet potatoes, and some rice pudding with 
 plenty of cream on it. There is always good cream 
 on the first day out." 
 
 You observe that he shivers as she says " cream." 
 He has kept a bold front at the mention of chicken, 
 and sweet potatoes, and rice pudding. But the cream 
 hurts. It is very painful. 
 
 Now, that poor sick lad will not make a clean 
 breast of it. He will not tell his dear little sister that 
 he is dreadfully uncomfortable, and that the mere 
 thought of food is a tragedy. On land, he would 
 make a great parade of his symptoms. At sea, he 
 will let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, prey on 
 his sallow cheek. He says that it is awfully jolly 
 on deck; that he is reading a most engrossing book 
 (which is upside down in his lap) ; that he feels lazy, 
 and that — well, he may join her later. It would be 
 foolish to wait for him. 
 
 It is the sporty old boy, in the jaunty waistcoat, 
 
90 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 and the spats on his shoes, who makes the hardest 
 fight. He has never understood what mal de tner 
 means, you have heard him say. He has crossed 
 the Atlantic forty-four times, and feels much more 
 at home at sea than he does on land. What he 
 hates is a calm, monotonous voyage. There is no 
 fun in the sea, when it is like a mill-pond. What he 
 prefers, more than anything else, is a storm, when the 
 boat rocks and pitches, and one has to be strapped 
 into one's berth at night. He has crossed the At- 
 lantic when every soul on board was terribly ill, in- 
 cluding the stewards and stewardesses, and even the 
 purser. Yet he was in rugged condition. He was 
 the only passenger at table. They all congratulated 
 him. They thought it wonderful. 
 
 This old salt gradually gets 
 less loquacious. The sea is 
 rather rough, and the rise and 
 fall of the ship can be distinctly 
 felt. There is nothing quite 
 like the rise and fall of a ship. 
 The rise and fall of the Roman 
 Empire must have been very 
 easy compared with it. When 
 the deck-steward comes round 
 with some delicious little 
 smoked-salmon sandwiches, the 
 old salt swears at him very 
 rudely, in the presence even 
 
'He has crossed the Atlantic forty-five times' 
 
Mai de Mer 91 
 
 of ladies. He was napping, he says, and the steward 
 had no right to wake him up. He was not napping, 
 but he is comatose, which is one of the symptoms! 
 We talk to him, but he is most snappy. He says 
 nothing more about longing for a storm, and is" 
 silent on the subject of the famous trip when he was 
 the only passenger at table. 
 
 We miss him from his accustomed haunts for two 
 whole days. There is a vacant steamer-chair on deck 
 — which would be pathetic to any of those song- 
 writers who revel in vacant chairs. We have almost 
 forgotten that he was a passenger, when on the third 
 day he reappears, as game as ever, arrayed in the 
 jaunty waistcoat, and the spats. Does he tell us the 
 truth, which is that he has been alarmingly ill, and 
 has not touched food since we saw him last ? Not he. 
 Perish the thought. He has been working awfully 
 hard in his stateroom at some accounts that he 
 brought on board with him to straighten out. Busi- 
 ness is business, he says. And mal de mer is sea- 
 sickness, we could add, but do not. We let the 
 pleasing fiction pass, and do not dare to ask questions. 
 Here is a man who, at home, probably has his entire 
 household dancing attendance on him for some im- 
 aginary ailment, strenuously refusing to admit the 
 popular indisposition of the ship. 
 
 Once I crossed with a Christian Scientist. I am 
 very fond of Christian Scientists because they are 
 such optimistic souls, although some of them are 
 
c>2 The Great Wet Way 
 
 dreadful bores. This gentleman was a playwright, 
 and I liked to believe that, as he denied disease, so 
 he denied failure. I had seen some of his failures,, 
 and could not help thinking that they were something 
 more than errors of mortal mind. He was very 
 chatty, and rather anxious for my conversion, which 
 I considered kind of him. He was always well, he 
 said, and his wife, once an invalid, was in robust 
 condition. He used to read me things born of the 
 Eddy cult. 
 
 " You say a sore throat is painful," he said one 
 day, " but that is impossible, for matter without mind 
 is not painful. The sore throat simply manifests 
 your belief in pain, through inflammation and 
 swelling; and you call this belief a sore throat. Now, 
 administer mentally to your patient a high affirmation 
 of truth on the subject, and it will soon cure the sore 
 throat. The fact that pain cannot exist where there 
 is no mortal mind to feel it, is a proof that this so- 
 called mind makes its own pain — that is, its own 
 belief in pain." 
 
 One beautiful day we sat together on the deck. 
 The sun was shining, and the air was warm, although 
 the boat did pitch a bit. All the passengers were very 
 jolly; nobody minded the refractory motion of the 
 ship except the Christian Scientist. He was very 
 silent. There was a something about the tint of his 
 complexion that, in any ordinary mortal, might have 
 been regarded as deathly pallor. Very often he 
 
Mai de Mer 
 
 93 
 
 sighed — at least, I considered that he sighed. It was 
 certainly what mortal mind would call sighing. 
 
 At last he arose, and said that he would go to his 
 room for an hour or so. There was some error to be 
 corrected, he said. There was a mortal belief to be 
 overcome. Whenever he had mortal beliefs on land, 
 he retired into solitude, and worked hard to counter- 
 act them. He always overcame them. So he went 
 below, looking like a ghastly impersonation of mal 
 de mer. When he returned, he was quite cheerful. 
 He admitted that he had felt uneasy, but in his room 
 he had talked it all over with himself, communed 
 with himself, and reasoned himself out of his mortal 
 belief. If there had been really rough weather, his 
 mortal belief would certainly have been most trouble- 
 some. No other passenger 
 had the ghost of such a belief. 
 
 People recover very rapidly 
 from mal de mer, as a rule, 
 but though you have caught 
 them with the goods, and 
 they know it, they are very 
 icy in their contempt for sub- ' 
 sequent victims. They cannot 
 understand why people give 
 in so readily. They have 
 quite forgotten their own 
 prostration, or assign it to 
 other causes. They had been Hn^^ 
 
94 The Great Wet Way 
 
 tired out; the strain of prolonged work had weakened 
 them; they were just nervous wrecks, and it was the 
 sudden change that laid them low. They are also 
 rather amused at later unfortunates. How people 
 can feel ill when the weather is so gorgeous and the 
 boat so steady, they cannot comprehend. People 
 must want to feel ill. And so on. They walk 
 proudly around, emphasising their own flourishing' 
 health. The men smoke pipes, in sheer deviltry, and 
 the women disclose candies and preserved fruits to 
 the lethargic eyes of the poor rug-swathed mummies. 
 They will tell their friends that they never had a 
 more delightful trip in their lives. They felt no 
 discomfort; in fact they hated to land. 
 
 "I have made a study of mal de mer" said a 
 doctor on board, one day, as we strolled around to- 
 gether. "You understand, of course, what it is? 
 The rolling of the ship disturbs that feeling of the 
 relation of the body to surrounding objects upon 
 which our sense of security rests. The nervous 
 system being thus subjected to a succession of shocks 
 and surprises, fails to effect the necessary adjustments 
 for equilibrium. Now bear that in mind. Try and 
 avoid those shocks and surprises. Adjust your 
 relationship with surrounding objects. When the 
 boat rolls, roll with it. When it pitches, pitch with 
 it. Humour it. Don't you understand? Don't let 
 the boat catch you napping at all. It is really very 
 simple." 
 
Mai de Mer 95 
 
 He illustrated his remarks by appropriate action. 
 He rolled, and he pitched, just like the boat. He 
 was most instructive, but — he did not come down to 
 dinner that night. It was very rough. The ship not 
 only pitched and tossed, but it indulged in a sort of 
 hoochy-koochy movement that raised havoc with the 
 equilibrium. I saw the erudite student of mal de mer 
 being led through the passage to his stateroom by a 
 sympathetic steward. He was not attempting to put 
 his theories into practice. He neither rolled with the 
 boat, nor pitched with the boat, nor hoochy-koochied 
 with the boat. He just leaned helplessly on the 
 steward, who dragged him along, uttering words of 
 hope and condolence — and perchance seeing a grate- 
 ful tip in the distance. 
 
 The remedies for mal de mer are so numerous that 
 it is a wonder the ailment has not been effectively 
 routed. They are as numerous as the remedies for 
 baldness, and just about as beneficent. The doctor 
 who is loud in his assertion that he can overcome 
 mal de mer, at the very moment when he is undone 
 by it, is on a par with the barber who recommends you 
 a lotion calculated to bring back the long-lost cover- 
 ing to any head — except his own, which shines like a 
 billiard ball. 
 
 The only positively and absolutely reliable way to 
 avoid mal de mer is — to keep off the mer. 
 
 A timid and somewhat cadaverous-looking youth 
 stood by my side on the deck of a steamer that was 
 
9 6 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 just about to leave New York. Everybody was saying 
 good-bye; groups of weeping relatives surrounded 
 each happy passenger. The crowd was thick and 
 furious. The timid youth stood apart, and I watched 
 him in his isolation. I saw him take from his pocket 
 a tiny glass tube, open it, and extract a pellet which 
 he swallowed. The action seemed to suggest the 
 idea of suicide, and I felt it was my duty to go up 
 to him and bid him pause, ere he took his gay young 
 life. It did not look particularly worth taking. 
 
 He laughed when I sternly asked him what he was 
 doing. " I'm trying a new cure," he said. " I'm a 
 wretched sailor, and I'm not going to suffer this trip, 
 if I can help it. This cure has been given me by a 
 friend, who swears by it." 
 
 He showed me the tube. The directions were 
 explicit, but very busy: "Five minutes before sailing, 
 take a pellet," I read. "At the moment the boat 
 
 moves, take another pel- 
 let. Walk up and down 
 for ten minutes, and take 
 a third pellet. At in- 
 tervals of seven minutes, 
 continue taking pellets 
 throughout the first 
 day. Immediately be- 
 fore and after meals, 
 take two pellets." 
 "You will never be 
 
Mai de Mer 97 
 
 able to do all that," I suggested. "Why, it is 
 slavery. You will wear yourself out with so much 
 work." 
 
 "I am going to follow this prescription closely," 
 he declared, looking at his watch and throwing a 
 pellet into his mouth, for the boat was moving. 
 " My friend was not ill for a moment." 
 
 "Was the weather rough?" 
 
 "I forgot to ask him that," he replied, "but I 
 seem to remember that he crossed in July." 
 
 Every time I saw that youth during the first day, 
 he was taking a pellet — standing on deck with his 
 watch in his hand, and waiting for the minutes to 
 pass. He seemed impatient for the pellet-moment 
 to arrive and then when it had arrived, equally im- 
 patient for the next. He told me that he had no 
 time to arrange things in his stateroom, and had not 
 even looked to see where it was. If he went down- 
 stairs, he would miss a pellet, and he might as well 
 give the thing a fair trial. When evening came he 
 looked tired and worn out. As I passed him, he 
 held up the pellet-bottle, and smiled, to show me 
 how nicely he was getting on. He had certainly 
 made headway, as there did not seem to be more 
 than fifty pellets left. By midnight, if he worked 
 hard, and sat up, he would probably have exhausted 
 the supply. 
 
 When I went below for the night, I said, "Sleep 
 well," to the poor boy. He complained that he had 
 
98 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 a dreadful headache and a strange sensation of in- 
 digestion a feeling of tightness, he called it. But 
 
 he intended to remain on deck for another hour, 
 just to continue with the pellets. 
 
 "One is due now," he said, breaking away from 
 me eagerly. "Excuse me." 
 
 Next day, I missed him, and feeling interested in 
 the solitary lad, I went to his room to see how he 
 was. He was quite ill. He had passed a sleepless 
 night. His temperature had been high, and he had 
 tossed miserably from side to side. The ship's doctor 
 told him that it was delayed tnal de mer, which is 
 very unpleasant — and also very unnecessary. 
 
 He recovered. He was as seasick as a human 
 being could be, after which his equilibrium was re- 
 stored. The other prostrated passengers were ahead 
 
Mai de Mer 99 
 
 of him, however. He was the last on the ship to 
 recover. 
 
 "I shall certainly write to my friend," he said, 
 " and ask him what sort of weather it was when he 
 took those brutal pellets; also — whether he took 
 them!" 
 
 There is another excellent remedy for mal de mer. 
 You take it every day for a week before sailing. By 
 the time you go on board, you have broken out into 
 a heavy eruption. You look as though you were 
 bringing a very fine case of measles to the ship. The 
 passengers regard you with suspicious eyes, and you 
 discover very soon that you are avoided. The first 
 person to whom you speak runs away. You hear 
 mothers warning their children " not to talk to that 
 man with the awful face," and the entire ship seems 
 to be whispering about you. They gaze upon you 
 as though you were a pariah, and the more explana- 
 tions you make, the more sinister are the looks you 
 encounter. The passengers seem to be deciding upon 
 a plan of action. They stand in groups on the deck, 
 talking in low tones, and watching you as you prowl 
 in wretched solitude. 
 
 You look normal after the first day, but feel fear- 
 fully abnormal. The beauty about this "cure" is that 
 it brings on mal de mer even in the very finest 
 weather — which is really wonderful. Furthermore, 
 the eruption returns occasionally, just to put you at 
 your ease, and I have known it endure for weeks 
 
ioo The Great Wet Way 
 
 after landing. In fact, it i9 a good deal for the 
 money. Ladies who take this cure wear heavy veils 
 when they are on deck, to hide their disfigurement. 
 But it is not often necessary for them to wear veils, 
 for they are generally in bed, begging the stewardess 
 to throw them overboard and put an end to their 
 miseries. Stewards and stewardesses, I may add, al- 
 though enjoined by the company to do all they can 
 for passengers, are never allowed to throw them 
 overboard when, in the agonies of mal de mer, they 
 plead for this luxury. And it does seem a luxury. 
 One yearns for it. 
 
 " The reason you are always ill, my dear madame," 
 I heard a doctor say to a lady, who was imploring 
 him to suggest to her some deterrent, " is that you do 
 not understand the art of breathing correctly. Now 
 if you go to your stateroom, disrobe, and watch your- 
 self, in perfect inactivity in front of a mirror, you 
 should note, if you breathe correctly, that: the ante- 
 rior and lateral walls of the chest move rhythmically 
 up and down, while air passes into and out of the 
 nostrils (and mouth also, if this be open) in corre- 
 spondence with the movement " 
 
 " Had I better keep my mouth open? " she asked 
 anxiously. 
 
 "Please listen," he continued, enjoying himself. 
 "With every uprising of the chest walls, the mem- 
 branous intercostal portions sink slightly, as if sucked 
 in, while, at the same time, the flexible walls of the 
 
Mai de Mer 101 
 
 abdomen bulge as if protruded by some internal 
 force. Do I make myself clear? " 
 
 The poor thing — one of those women who always 
 think in words of one syllable — looked a trifle em- 
 barrassed, but she said she understood perfectly, and 
 had never heard breathing so simply and eloquently 
 explained. 
 
 "Later on," he resumed, "take a little hand-mir- 
 ror, and look at the back of your throat, during 
 respiration, and you should notice that the glottis is 
 wide open during inspiration and that it becomes nar- 
 rower by the approximation of the vocal chords dur- 
 ing expiration. This alteration is produced by the 
 action of the laryngeal muscles." 
 
 " I see," she said, " thank you so much." 
 
 She was very ill indeed. In fact she was one of 
 the miserable creatures who never appeared on deck 
 until the day before landing. I told her that I had 
 listened to the medical exhortation on correct breath- 
 ing that the friendly physician had uttered. 
 
 "Perhaps it was good," she said sadly, "but I 
 never got a chance to try it. I was taken ill, while I 
 was getting the mirror ready, and fussing around, 
 instead of taking things easily. If I had stayed on 
 deck, I might have had a better chance, but there I 
 was in that stuffy stateroom, moving mirrors around, 
 trying to get the right light, and — illness overcame 
 me, and I stayed ill. Never again. I shall go on 
 breathing, as I have been brought up to breathe. I 
 
102 The Great Wet Way- 
 
 shall breathe at sea just the same as on land. I be- 
 lieve that doctor liked to hear himself talk." 
 
 When you have been so ill that you have longed to 
 be cast into the Atlantic Ocean, and have threatened 
 to report your steward for disobedience, because he 
 refused to fling you into the billows, it is disgusting 
 to be told that the boat never rocked once all the way 
 over, and that its steadiness was so remarkable that 
 the world's engineers were interested. You would 
 never lie on such a subject, and yet — if the ship did 
 not pitch and toss, you did; and if the ship did not 
 pitch and toss you, then you must have dreamed it. 
 
 The boat was so steady on one trip, during which 
 several passengers had been utterly overwhelmed, 
 that, according to statements published in the papers, 
 a glass of water, full to the brim, had been placed on 
 the deck, and left there for experimental purposes. 
 None of the water was spilled. This was looked 
 upon as an extraordinary feat. Some of the papers 
 wrote editorials about it, and declared that this ship 
 must be steadier than many of the sky-scrapers in 
 New York that vibrate so unpleasantly. I met one 
 of the feminine passengers the next day, and she was 
 very indignant. 
 
 "Did you read what they said in the papers about 
 placing a glass of water on deck? " she asked vehe- 
 mently. " It's easy to make foolish statements like 
 that. Did you see that glass of water? No. Did I? 
 No. Did any of my friends? No. We were all too 
 
Mai de Mer 103 
 
 ill to see it, even if it had been there. They might 
 have placed a glass of whiskey on deck, and nobody 
 would have had the energy to drink it. It's dreadful 
 to think that seamen can lie so." 
 
 It is also exasperating to meet a fellow-sufferer — 
 the fellow who sat beside you on the deck, and was 
 just a trifle worse than you were — and to discover 
 that he has quite forgotten his illness, while you are 
 so candid about yours. 
 
 " Well, old chap," you say, affectionately, " I guess 
 that dry land is good enough for us. You look better 
 than you did last Wednesday. I shall never forget 
 the look of sea-green anguish on your face. We 
 were a couple of unfortunates." 
 
 He looks at you as though you were speaking an 
 unknown language. He has no idea what you mean. 
 He can recall no such incident as that which you 
 mention, and he is so plausible about it that you begin 
 to think that you must have been dreaming. And 
 yet, you are willing to swear that you were a misera- 
 ble wretch last Wednesday. 
 
 "/ certainly felt very groggy," you say stammer- 
 ingly. " And — and — I thought you did." 
 
 " Not at all," he asserts mendaciously. " I may 
 have had a headache. I remember now that I had 
 been smoking too much — too many cigars. Other- 
 wise, I have never felt better in my life. It was a 
 delightful voyage, and I am sorry it is over. The sea 
 was like a mill-pond — almost too calm." 
 
 He pursues his way with alacrity, and you wonder 
 
104 The Great Wet Way 
 
 why remembrance is so bitter. You seem to see a 
 vision of him on that hideous Wednesday when he 
 "slanged" the deck-steward for suggesting food; 
 when he sighed every time the boat lurched; when he 
 swore that nothing would ever induce him to cross 
 again, and when he sank into comatose slumber until 
 darkness settled on the face of the waters. With 
 laughter, the world is with you; with mal de mer, 
 you are alone. It is very provoking. People on 
 board ship are most ungrateful. You do all in your 
 power to ameliorate their symptoms, and they tell 
 you that they never had any. What's the use ? 
 
 It is said, I do not know how truly, that very old 
 people never suffer from mal de mer. I happened to 
 mention this to several people who had enjoyed 
 splendid health during the trip. They did not seem 
 at all pleased, and seemed to think it personal. The 
 New England spinster, I was informed, took it much 
 to heart, and declared that she had suffered a great 
 deal, in her stateroom. After that, I never alluded 
 to the subject again. I thought that passengers 
 would be glad to know that it was possible to out- 
 grow such a distinctly disagreeable ailment. When 
 I first heard that very old people are never ill at sea, 
 it quite cheered me up. It gave me something to live 
 for, to anticipate pleasantly. In fact, it contributed 
 charm to old age. But evidently the statement was 
 displeasing. The reason I made it was that a little 
 girl told me that her grandmother was crazy to go to 
 Europe, but was afraid of the ocean. 
 
Mai de Mer io£ 
 
 " Very old people are never ill," I said, and when 
 she was surprised and incredulous, I mentioned it to 
 the others, and the New England spinster happened 
 to be among them. This seems a trifle, but as my 
 remark made me so many enemies, it is not a trifle 
 to me. 
 
 Never waste any sympathy on people afflicted with 
 mal de mer. This is a difficult rule to follow, be- 
 cause if you have ever suffered yourself you long to 
 be helpful. When you go up on deck after break- 
 fast, feeling pleased with the world in general, do not 
 approach the listless fellow lying outstretched on his 
 steamer-chair, and tell him that a soft-boiled egg 
 would do him a power of good. 
 
 Do not try to make conversation with the once- 
 animated widow, whom you see swathed in rugs, by 
 telling her that the bacon at breakfast was excellent, 
 and suggesting that she try it. 
 
 Never talk oatmeal-and-cream to the recumbent 
 chap who has just been dragged from his stateroom 
 to get a little fresh air on deck. You have eaten it, 
 and it has made you very good-humoured, but he will 
 undoubtedly resent any allusion to oatmeal-and 
 cream. 
 
 Never wake up comatose deck mummies to offer 
 them a cigar, however generous you may be, and 
 however keen you may know that their appetite for 
 tobacco usually is. They will look upon you as 
 though you were a leper. 
 
io6 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 Pretty girls love candies, but do not offer your box 
 of the very richest to the maiden who sits with her 
 eyes closed and her hands listlessly folded in front of 
 her. She is oppressed, but it is not by any need of 
 candy. 
 
 Do not discuss restaurants, and epicures, and 
 " favourite dishes " until you have been several days 
 at sea, and even then look well before you leap. 
 
 If the eggs at breakfast have been a trifle world- 
 weary, or the fish has been affable in spots only, do 
 not mention this even to your best friend. Let the 
 secret die with you. On board ship, friendship is a 
 brittle commodity. 
 
 Do not brag constantly that you have never missed 
 a meal, to the sad-faced individual, who has never 
 missed — missing them all. 
 
 And if you must have a Welsh-rarebit before re- 
 tiring at night, whisper your desire into the ear of the 
 steward. Do not advertise it among the prostrate 
 forms on deck. 
 
 CESgiOgg^;, 
 
CHILDREN ON BOARD 
 
 RETTY little girls on the 
 ocean liner are nearly al- 
 ways eleven years old. 
 At first, you are com- 
 pletely bewildered by 
 what seems to be the 
 oddest sort of coinci- 
 dence. You have been 
 chatting very vivaciously 
 with one of those cun- 
 ning young American lassies who are such good com- 
 pany during the trip, and you ask her how old she is. 
 She looks at least fifteen, and talks at least thirty-one, 
 but she says, with a pellucidly truthful look into the 
 middle of your eye, " I'm just eleven." 
 
 You have been laughing at the varied European 
 experiences of another much-travelled little girl, who 
 has been everywhere, and " done " everything, who 
 " bosses " her mommer and popper, and treats you 
 with a sort of condescending superiority. She seems 
 much older than many of the old people on deck, but 
 she tells you, in emphatic tones, that she is eleven 
 years old. You suggest that she is very big for her 
 age, and the remark appears to annoy her. You no- 
 
 107 
 
108 The Great Wet Way 
 
 tice, subsequently, that she seems to be telling her 
 father and mother, who look at you somewhat indig- 
 nantly from their steamer-chairs. 
 
 You meet a third, very tall and very lanky. She 
 wears short dresses which look inappropriate, and 
 her hair floats in the breeze rather conspicuously. 
 She suggests a problem. Is she really a little girl, or 
 a big girl disguised? You ask her, and she replies 
 shortly, " I was eleven last birthday." 
 
 You begin to believe that you are associating with 
 the future mothers of a race of giants. Never in all 
 your life have you seen such tremendous eleven-year- 
 olders. I remember listening to a conversation be- 
 tween one of these overgrown girls and a tiny mite 
 of nine years old. It was very instructive. 
 
 " How old are you ? " piped the tiny mite of nine. 
 
 " Eleven," promptly responded the big girl. 
 
 " You're only two years older than lam?" queried 
 the tot incredulously. " Why, I heard mommer say 
 that you must be at least sixteen " 
 
 " You're a very rude little girl," said the big girl 
 irritably, " and you talk too much." 
 
 " What time do you go to bed? " persisted the tot, 
 the retiring hour being the great bond of sympathy 
 between children of all ages. 
 
 "Any time," replied the big girl. "Generally ten 
 o'clock." 
 
 " I go to bed at seven," murmured the tot, " and 
 mommer says when I'm eleven, I shall go to bed at 
 
Children on Board 
 
 109 / 
 
 eight. I suppose I shan't be as big as you are. It 
 must be ripping to be tall and old-looking like you." 
 
 You long for a key to this apparent mystery, for 
 the problem grows knottier. You pick up a book, in 
 which you read the inscription : " To dear Cora, from 
 mother, on her fourteenth birthday." Later on, dear 
 Cora promptly tells you that she is eleven years old, 
 and you suppose that mother must have given her a 
 book that she had intended to present three years 
 later. Dear Cora certainly looks fourteen, and abso- 
 lutely refuses to "play" with the children who look 
 eleven. She regards them as babies, after the manner 
 of big little girls. 
 
 All this is very puzzling, of course, unless you hap- 
 pen to have children of your own. Then you know; 
 there is no mystery at 
 all; it is as plain as a 
 pikestaff. There is 
 an explanatory legend 
 on every steamship 
 company's prospec- 
 tus: "Children be- 
 tween one and eleven 
 pay half fare." Un- 
 der such circum- 
 stances, you can quite 
 understand how an- 
 noying it is for pa- 
 rents to discover that 
 
1 10 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 their children have been born two or 
 three years too late. It is unpardon- 
 able, and it is unbearable. But as 
 no certificates of birth are ever asked 
 for, there is a remedy. The truth is 
 a very good thing in its right place, 
 but half a fare saved — well, that is 
 not such a very bad thing in its right 
 place, which is on the ocean steamer. 
 Parents have a great deal of 
 trouble in this matter, but then, they 
 have trouble in so many others, that 
 they are used to it. Nice little girls of 
 twelve, and thirteen, and fourteen 
 hate to under-age themselves. Their ambition is to 
 be as grown-up as possible. Of course. It is not 
 until a girl has ceased to be a girl that she is inter- 
 ested in subtraction. Therefore, many children can- 
 not and will not understand why they must be so 
 young on the ocean. They dislike it immensely, espe- 
 cially when they have to dig out some forgotten 
 young clothes from the limbo of the past. 
 
 The annoying thing that parents have to face is 
 the fact that perfect strangers feel completely justi- 
 fied in asking the dear children how old they are. 
 This should never be permitted. A young girl on 
 board ship is as old as she doesn't look, and doesn't 
 feel. This prying into statistics, all very well on land, 
 is most impertinent at sea. Men and women who are 
 
Children on Board 
 
 in 
 
 fathers and mothers never pry. 
 They are so busy reducing their 
 own children to the half fare 
 that they are sympathetic and in- 
 tuitively sagacious. It is the young 
 unmarried people who are so in- 
 quisitive and so embarrassing. 
 Experience teaches. Nowadays, 
 I never ask a child her age on the 
 steamer, for I know that she is 
 eleven. If she is not, her parents 
 are reckless folks who are anxious 
 to throw their money away. 
 
 Yet this complication is often 
 lovely. Frequently one crosses year after year with 
 the same people. Little Miss Cute who was eleven 
 last year, has not aged at all. You are a year older, 
 and you look it. But she is still eleven, although she 
 doesn't look it. She will be eleven next year, too. 
 She will be eleven until her younger brother, who is 
 thirteen, and too big to be half-price, reveals the fatal 
 truth in self-defence. Little Miss Cute sometimes 
 stays in Europe for a whole year, and returns — still 
 eleven. Some people think that foreign travel keeps 
 one young. It certainly seems to do so in this case. 
 
 Occasionally these age-restrained youngsters rebel; 
 
 frequently they forget. The eleven-year-older who 
 
 is fourteen is anxious to take part in the " sports " 
 
 -that are sometimes organised on the ship. He enters 
 
112 The Great Wet Way 
 
 the race for boys over twelve. The ocean-fact that he 
 is just eleven has slipped from his memory, poor 
 little chap! Mommer hauls him back to his en- 
 forced ultra juvenility. 
 
 " You naughty boy I " I heard her say to him on 
 one of these festive occasions. " You know you are 
 eleven. Didn't I tell you that I wouldn't take you 
 to Europe unless you were eleven? Go at once and 
 tell the officer that you won't be twelve for a year." 
 (She might have made it three years, for he was a 
 small lad.) 
 
 The poor child wept. " I don't want to go in for 
 a baby's race," he protested. " It isn't fair to me, 
 and it isn't fair to the others. Who cares how old I 
 am anyway? " 
 
 " / care, Reginald," said mother, " and your father 
 cares. Now be a good boy. We shall land the day 
 after to-morrow, and you can be sixteen if you like." 
 
 The child who is eleven years old just for the trip 
 conflicts with the child who has a certificated right to 
 that age. How the poor kid does hate to be eleven 1 
 He would far sooner have remained in New York to 
 be joyously thirteen, and to "play" with his elders. 
 His pleasure is marred. He becomes surly. Life to 
 him is retrogression, not progression. He goes to the 
 children's table — on the English liner — with the 
 nurses and maids, who decline to believe that he is 
 only eleven, and cross-examine him, and try to trip 
 him — which is easy enough, for his heart is not in his 
 
Children on Board 
 
 ii3 
 
 fib. He is tucked up in his bunk at an ungodly hour, 
 for the sake of appearances, and he feels the gross 
 indignity of the thing. The child who is really eleven 
 insists upon making a pal of him, and sees no reason 
 for his haughtiness. 
 
 The half-price child rarely enjoys his trip across, 
 and when he has landed there is the dread presenti- 
 ment always with him that, when he returns, he will 
 be obliged to be eleven again. Yet parents feel no 
 qualms when they buy their tickets. To say diffi- 
 
H4 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 dently that a child is eleven, is easy, but to keep him 
 eleven for a week, when he is longing for his ma- 
 jority, is not so simple. 
 
 Sometimes, the parents of the various children con- 
 flict. Mommer is very proud of her boy, who is so 
 well-grown, splendidly developed, and just eleven! 
 She points to him with pride; she brags about him; 
 she tells his age to everybody, though she may be less 
 candid next year. 
 
 " Yes, he is a fine boy," says somebody. " But 
 look at that great big chap over there. He's a won- 
 der. Why, he is positively growing a moustache. He 
 is only eleven." 
 
 " If that boy's eleven, then I'm sixteen," declares 
 the baffled mother, indignantly. " The way in which 
 people lie about their children's age is disgusting. 
 There is no excuse for it, and I cannot for the life of 
 
 me understand how 
 they do it." 
 
 She will under- 
 stand next year, and 
 perhaps she, too, 
 will — er — lie. 
 
 The infant is free, 
 I think, on some of 
 the lines. On others, 
 it costs five dollars — 
 provided there is 
 only one in a family. 
 
Children on Board 115 
 
 The infant should be charged at double the miximum 
 rate, and there should be none in any family that un- 
 dertakes the transatlantic trip. If the infant enjoys 
 the ocean crossing it does so in its own peculiar way. 
 It is usually very merry at midnight, when the adult 
 passengers have ceased to frivol, and it generally 
 prattles delightfully at the matutinal hour of five 
 o'clock. Its parents, who are cooped up with it in a 
 stateroom, revel in the vivacious moods of their in- 
 fant, even if, to the other passengers, those moods 
 seem strangely out of place. They tell everybody 
 that it is "such a good child," and that it never cries. 
 When, however, you are particularly eager to forget 
 the bounding billows, in happy oblivion, good infants 
 appear to you to be just as prohibitive as bad ones. 
 Baby is awfully cute in the next stateroom, and it is 
 not crying; yet you would feel relieved if it were not 
 laughing. Dear little thing! Of course you love 
 babies, and their sunny ways, but when the ship is 
 very silent, and you are quite drowsy, and your bunk 
 is most comfortable, and you are longing to indulge 
 in the pleasant but hackneyed pastime of being 
 " rocked in the cradle of the deep," the sunny ways 
 of the pet, who is separated from you by a few 
 boards, lack all warmth. 
 
 Whenever you are just " dropping off," and are 
 congratulating yourself that baby has got ahead of 
 you, the clear manly voice of the masculine parent 
 sings out, " Upsi ! Upsi ! Popper's boy ! " This hap- 
 
ii6 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 pened to me last year. I tried to Christian-Science 
 myself into sublime disregard of such petty stings — 
 errors of mortal mind — but the scheme utterly failed 
 to work. The ocean was quite noisy; the sound of 
 the machinery was loud in my ears, but above it all 
 I heard: " Upsi ! Upsi ! Popper's boy! " 
 
 I could almost see that proud young father, toss- 
 ing up " popper's boy," and drinking in the delight- 
 ful cooing laughter of the infant. What annoyed me 
 more than anything was that mommer was not in the 
 least disturbed by "Upsi! Upsi! Popper's boy!" 
 and this seemed to me like rank injustice. / should 
 have slept, while she enjoyed the gambols of 
 her child. If I had particularly hankered for baby 
 talk in the privacy of the stateroom, I could 
 have found some infant to accompany me across the 
 
 ocean, and could have 
 afforded the five dol- 
 lars, which is, of 
 course, very little. 
 
 M y room - mates 
 also slept soundly, 
 and stoutly declined 
 to interrupt their 
 slumbers by listening 
 to "Upsi! Upsi! 
 Popper's b o y." I 
 yearned to wake them 
 up, and make fellow- 
 
Children on Board 117 
 
 sufferers of them. It is always so dreadful to be 
 alone. Upon my room-mates it must have acted as 
 a lullaby, and I envied them. When I asked one of 
 them in the morning if he had really slept through 
 the joy-song in the next cabin, he testily replied that 
 it did not bother him in the least, for he was very 
 fond of children. The insinuation in his remark 
 seemed to be that I was not! It was not worth 
 arguing about. One can be very fond of children, 
 and yet prefer them at the other end of the ship. 
 
 On one liner every man on board seemed to 
 trundle a baby-carriage about the deck. There are 
 folding baby-carriages that can be put into steamer- 
 trunks — a charming arrangement. There were so 
 many of these on board, that you felt positively im- 
 moral without one. It seemed like a wicked waste 
 of time to walk up and down the deck without a 
 baby-carriage. In fact, on this ship, I thought that 
 the company provided them, and could scarcely re- 
 frain from applying to the purser for a nice, easy- 
 going baby-carriage, with a fractious infant in it. 
 Parents looked quite scornfully at non-parents. They 
 taunted them, and appeared to wonder how they 
 could possibly imagine that they were enjoying 
 an ocean trip without a baby. They looked upon 
 you as . useless lumber, as you lay idle in your 
 steamer-chair, watching them trundling past. It was 
 just like a kindergarten. The infants slept in the 
 keen sea air, and did themselves a great deal of good. 
 
n8 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 The parents seemed 
 anxious for them to sleep 
 as much as they could in 
 the day-time, so that 
 | they could prattle pret- 
 tily during the night. 
 Babies on a liner always 
 sleep all day, and al- 
 ways do not sleep all 
 night. If you can regulate your own slumbers to fit 
 in with this pious scheme, you will be quite undis- 
 turbed. It is very healthy for a baby to sleep in the 
 open air, instead of in a stuffy state-room ; it would 
 also be healthy for you, but you cannot break your- 
 self of the foolish habit of sleeping, or of trying 
 to sleep, at night. 
 
 Why do babies cross the ocean? Do not tell me 
 that it is to get to the other side, because either 
 side would suit them equally well. They are dragged 
 across, poor little dears, because mommer and pop- 
 per cannot leave them at home. They are taken to 
 Italy and Switzerland, and initiated into all the 
 agonies of foreign travel, simply because mommer 
 and popper selfishly like foreign travel. Unlike 
 Mr. Grossmith, in his song, parents refuse to " leave 
 the baby on the shore." 
 
 " I took a nurse with me one year," a fond 
 mother confided in me, " but I shall never do it again. 
 Nurse suffered from mal de mer from the very in- 
 
Children on Board 119 
 
 stant we sailed until we landed. I had to take care 
 of her. I waited on her hand and foot, and took 
 charge of baby as well. I have discovered that 
 nurses are very sensitive. No matter how calm the 
 weather may be, they are always ill. They seem to 
 think that it is their privilege to be ill; that to be 
 well would be ridiculous, and even Quixotic on their 
 part. It was the busiest voyage I have ever had. I 
 should like to have been ill myself, for a day or two, 
 but I simply hadn't time. No more nurses for me." 
 Baby on the ocean is always well. This sounds 
 refreshing, but sometimes baby's health is distinctly 
 in the way, and extremely awkward. I have seen the 
 mother laid low, the aunt prostrated, the little sister 
 comatose in her bunk, yet baby insisted upon being 
 petted, and played with, and looked after. Baby 
 hated to stay in the stateroom with the invalids. 
 Baby was gay and obstreperous, and inclined to pat- 
 ronise the turbulent ocean. It is a morbid mother 
 who repines at the good health of her offspring, but 
 in this particular family the poor sea-racked parent 
 declared that if baby had just felt a touch of the dis- 
 comfort that raged on the ship, it would have made 
 the child more sympathetic. As it was, it refused to 
 be discomfited. It was hungry. The sight of food 
 made the mother wish that she was dead, but she had 
 to dally with milk, and arrange dainty repasts for the 
 voracious infant. You can take your dog across for 
 ten dollars, and the ship's butcher will take care of 
 
120 The Great Wet Way 
 
 him for you, in consideration of a tip. But you 
 cannot leave the baby with the ship's butcher. You 
 can take a bird over for four dollars provided that 
 you cage it. But you cannot cage the baby, and that 
 is why the dear little cherub seems at times to intrude. 
 
 You must remember that no baby is crazy to go to 
 Europe. The average infant is quite satisfied to stay 
 anywhere, and does not clamour for foreign travel. It 
 goes because it is compelled to go, and doesn't know 
 what is to happen to it. Therefore every ocean-going 
 mother owes something to the poor baby, who has 
 been dragged from its nursery to the steamship, and 
 will be dragged from the steamship to some un- 
 comfortable hotel. If one were only able to crate a 
 baby, as one crates a bicycle, the matter would be 
 very simple. Bicycles must be " properly crated," 
 and are taken at the " owners' risk." Why has a 
 bicycle privileges that are denied the baby? 
 
 On the old-fashioned lines, particularly the con- 
 servative English ones, children take their meals at 
 a separate table. On the German steamers that cater 
 to free Americans, and know what the Americans 
 like, such a restriction is not practised. Little Sadie 
 sits at dinner with mommer and popper, studies the 
 elongated menu, and goes through it all religiously. 
 English passengers are aghast at this. They think it 
 dreadful. The English child is kept under a bushel 
 until maturity sets in. It is brought up in the delight- 
 ful notion that the good things enjoyed by its parents 
 belong to later life only. It is satisfied with inferior 
 
Children on Board 
 
 121 
 
 food conservatively believed to be more nourishing. 
 It grows up greedy, and always hungry, clamouring 
 for the delicacies that were denied it in its early days. 
 The American child, permitted to partake of every- 
 thing, and not taught to regard any particular viand 
 
 as forbidden fruit, acquires no abnormal appetite, 
 and is very sensible. You see the two brands of child 
 on the ship, and the difference between them is im- 
 pressive. 
 
 The ocean child is very precocious. The child of 
 the exclusive passenger is most amusing. Although 
 it is usually requested not to talk to promiscuous 
 
122 The Great Wet Way 
 
 people — it talks. It tells you all about popper's auto- 
 mobiles, and how much they cost; it knows the price 
 of mommer's dresses, and it can discuss foreign 
 hotels very plausibly. 
 
 The child with a nurse looks contemptuously at 
 the child without one. It has " caste " written all 
 over it. It is a haughty little kid, taking its cue from 
 mommer and popper, who educated it in all the sub- 
 tleties of democratic aristocracy. And these sub- 
 tleties are so numerous, that you are particularly 
 delighted at the interesting study. Sometimes the 
 exclusive child is paraded up and down the deck by 
 a French maid, and talks villainous French to this 
 long-suffering type. So does mommer. You can hear 
 mommer's Ollendorfian quips above the swish of the 
 ocean, but the replies of the French maid are in- 
 audible. The little girl, you are told, speaks better 
 French than English. You can quite believe it. No 
 self-respecting democratic aristocracy considers its 
 native tongue very important. French is the lan- 
 guage for the nice child. Yet in France, the most 
 inferior people speak French — people whom you 
 would refuse to ask to your house speak absolutely 
 perfect French I 
 
 The Captain loves children. Every Captain loves 
 children, and says so. They pester the life out of 
 him, and are fearfully familiar, but he smiles at their 
 behaviour — when mommer is looking. On a fine 
 morning, the Captain walks round the deck, chucks 
 
Children on Board 
 
 123 
 
 the children under the chin, and tells them stories of 
 his own litde boys and girls. The last Captain I 
 crossed with had thirteen, and was able to remember 
 all their names. The mothers on board thought it 
 was perfectly sweet of him having so many children. 
 He was a mother's man, and was very popular. 
 Though he had so many little girls of his own, he 
 had no objection at all to bigger girls — those of 
 eighteen or nineteen years old. He was awfully 
 nice to them, probably remembering that they had 
 once been tots. That is a great test. Every man 
 who adores the tiny prattling girl, should be 
 kind to the maiden of blushing sixteen, just be- 
 cause she was once a tot ! It is not nice to be harsh 
 to a pretty girl just 
 because she is no 
 longer a tot. She 
 cannot help it. 
 
 The doctor on 
 board usually pre- 
 fers little tots of 
 twenty or so, and 
 makes himself very 
 attractive to them. 
 He loves the tiny 
 children, however, 
 especially those with 
 grown-up sisters, 
 and he makes great _ 
 
124 The Great Wet Way 
 
 pets of them, as a sort of prelude to their grown- 
 up sisters. 
 
 Children on board are very useful in that way. 
 iYou see a very charming young woman, who has 
 no husband to speak of, and who drags around a 
 husky boy all the time. On land, you would think 
 the husky boy an odious cub, with his bad manners, 
 his " tough " accent, and his dirty hands. At sea, 
 you take to him instinctively. You insist upon 
 walking with him on deck, and you play games with 
 him, and let him win. Later on, his pretty mother 
 thanks you and, in order to be thanked comfort- 
 ably, you sit in the unoccupied steamer-chair by her 
 side. And there you arel A pleasant friendship 
 is established, which might have been very diffi- 
 cult without the husky boy. 
 
 Many young men, who are dying to talk to a 
 pretty girl, pave the way with a few trivial candies 
 offered to her little sister. They are attracted 
 irresistibly to the tot who subsequently leads them 
 in the direction of the pretty girl. You often hear 
 this sort of thing: 
 
 " Sylvia, come and sit down. You are worrying 
 that gentleman. You mustn't do it." 
 
 " She isn't worrying me at all," says that gen- 
 tleman, doffing his hat as he realises that every- 
 thing comes to him who waits. " I am awfully 
 fond of children." 
 
 The pretty girl smiles adorably. " It is ex- 
 
Children on Board 125 
 
 tremely good of you," she says. " I've watched 
 you playing with Sylvia, and she seems to have 
 been leading you a life. You look tired. Sylvia, 
 run away and play." 
 
 " I guess I was a bit tired," he says, dropping 
 into a seat by the pretty girl. " What a charming 
 child she is — so friendly and so amusing." 
 
 Sylvia does not come back, and he does not go 
 after her, and the pretty girl wonders where little 
 Sylvia is, but does not worry. After that he plays 
 no more with little Sylvia. He is always tired, in 
 a chair by the pretty girl. And there you are again ! 
 
 Young men should never travel without candies. 
 A box or two of the very best is worth its weight 
 in gold. It is an open sesame to many delightful 
 associations. A young man can never do wrong 
 by offering a child some candies, and children never 
 travel alone. They nearly all have sisters — affec- 
 tionate girls who love to see the children nicely 
 treated. Candies can often be bought on the ship, 
 but it is better to purchase them on land, as part of 
 one's travelling trousseau. 
 
 Sometimes, of course, love's labour seems to have 
 been lost. On one trip there was a very pretty 
 young matron, who was travelling with her little 
 boy — and a very cute little boy he was. It was 
 on a German boat, and the officers did not speak 
 very good English. The purser liked the pretty 
 matron very much, and made friends immediately 
 
126 The Great Wet Way 
 
 with the boy. He was soon introduced to the 
 young matron, and seemed very happy. 
 
 " I only wish I spoke English properly," I 
 heard him say to her. 
 
 " I'll teach you, if you like," she declared 
 promptly. 
 
 The joy on that man's face was appalling! 
 Here was his chance to learn English, and never 
 have I seen a fellow manifest such a craving for 
 knowledge. That night I saw the pretty matron 
 and the purser on deck. She was teaching him 
 English, but he looked crestfallen, miserable, and 
 even despondent. He was a very bad pupil, and 
 his verbs were simply disgusting. She was very 
 patiently, very encouragingly, doing her best to 
 give him at least a superficial knowledge of our 
 beautiful language — the language of Shakespeare 1 
 — and on her lap sat the cute little boy! The cute 
 little boy was very wide-awake, and lively — also 
 extremely chatty. Now why did the purser look 
 so wretched? He was very fond of the cute little 
 boy. Yet his English did not improve at all. He 
 was still far from fluent when we landed. Perhaps 
 matrons with cute little boys, worn on their laps, 
 are not the best teachers in the world. 
 
 The annoying thing about children on board is 
 that they never seem to go to bed. Their reign is 
 endless. Much as you love them, and revel in their 
 ingenuous prattle, you feel that they should go to 
 
Children on Board 
 
 1127 
 
 bed after dark. It is good for their immature 
 intellect. But it is after dark that they are at their 
 liveliest. You are enjoying a heart-to-heart talk 
 with a very pleasing girl in a sombre corner of the 
 deck that you have had in your mind's eye all day. 
 You are talking about the moonlit sea, and the 
 poetry of the occasion surges in your breast. It 
 is precisely this sombre corner of the deck that the 
 children select for their very unnecessary game of 
 hide-and-seek. Perhaps you have just remarked 
 that " the moon is the sweet regent of the sky," 
 which always sounds well, and is a useful quotation 
 to have around the house, when there is a hideous 
 shout of " Cuckoo! I'm ready! " behind your chair, 
 and out bounces an irrepressible. It is an awful 
 shock, and your nerves are horribly jangled. 
 
 "It is disgusting, keeping children up so late," 
 you declare peevishly, losing all interest in "the 
 sweet regent of the 
 sky." But you dis- 
 cover that it is her 
 brother who has call- 
 ed " Cuckoo !" and 
 you are obliged to 
 smile indulgently, 
 and assert that after 
 all, the dear little 
 things must amuse 
 themselves. You re- 
 
128 The Great Wet Way 
 
 peat that you love children, but at that moment 
 you loathe them. 
 
 Children make and mar flirtations. You think 
 that you have done your duty when you have de- 
 clared all day that you love children. At night 
 you feel the need of a rest. At night you are 
 distinctly of the opinion that you are not called upon 
 to love children so fervently. But the sea-child is 
 very obstreperous. Its high spirits are absolutely 
 alarming. You want the quiet, dark ship for 
 poetic sentiment; the sea-child wants it for noisy 
 games. And the sea-child gets it. It breaks in upon 
 your carefully arranged tete-a-tete, and there is no 
 redress. While candies work well all day, they 
 decline to carry their labours into the night. 
 Children hate to go to bed; no amount of candy 
 will act as an inducement. Little Johnnie laughs 
 in your face when you promise him a box of candy 
 to-morrow, if he will go to bed like a good boy. 
 He may even tell you to "go chase yourself," for 
 he is a bright little chap. 
 
 Exciting bridge games in the smokeroom are 
 broken up by dear little children. They dash in, 
 and drag their father away, under the pretence that 
 mother wants him, just as you have doubled a " no 
 trumper," and are feverish and petulant to play it. 
 This is an unkind cut. It often happens. Some- 
 times it looks as though children were trained to 
 
Children on Board 129 
 
 romp in and break up a nice game at a critical 
 moment. Then they lean over you, while you are 
 playing, and describe the cards you hold to your 
 opponent. Your opponent says that children are 
 awfully cute. You say nothing, afraid that the re- 
 mark uppermost on your lips would be unfit for 
 publication. Later on — when you have lost the 
 rubber — you cannot help asserting that a smoke- 
 room is no place for a child, which is a very tem- 
 perate remark, under the circumstances. 
 
 This sort of remark never makes a hit with the 
 parent, probably because its truth is so apparent. 
 The parent glares at you, and then the child begins 
 to cry, and you feel a wretch, and give the naughty 
 little thing a penny, and the naughty little thing 
 ceases crying immediately. After that you ex- 
 perience no pressing need for any more bridge, and 
 sit in a corner playing solitaire. 
 
 The ship's children are indeed irrepressible. Only 
 an idiot would try to repress them, and he would try 
 only once. Parents want the little things to have a 
 thoroughly good time, and they can achieve that 
 only by making everybody else restive. If you ob- 
 ject, you are " grouchy " and the children are 
 warned to " keep away from that disagreeable 
 man " — which you wouldn't mind if they did keep 
 away. They play behind the life-boats, where the 
 ship's rail ceases to exist, and your heart is in your 
 
130 The Great Wet Way- 
 
 mouth at the thought of possible disaster. But if 
 you mention danger to the parents, you are snubbed. 
 They are evidently willing to take chances. 
 
 Then your child " won't play " with some other 
 child, and you fondly agree that the other child 
 isn't worth playing with; and the parents of the 
 other child come up, and indignantly complain that 
 your child is badly behaved, and ask that it be 
 punished. And the other children whisper about it, 
 and the other parents take sides. The ship seems 
 alarmingly small — much too small. You cannot take 
 your child home ; the other parents cannot take their 
 children home. All the poor things are floating 
 away from home. The quarrel is soon settled — in 
 order to make room for another. Those who have 
 no children are always unnecessarily interested, and 
 invariably sorry for the child that has caused the 
 trouble. 
 
 Candy and chloroform are two commodities that 
 come in handy for an adjustment of the child ques- 
 tion on board — the candy for the child, and the 
 chloroform for yourself. 
 
VII 
 FLIRTATIONS 
 
 OTHING that the 
 Flirt of either sex has 
 ever imagined in 
 wildest dream can 
 beat the ocean steam- 
 ship for "cosy 
 corner " surprises and 
 >nook-y subtlety. For 
 seven days the Flirt 
 of either sex has an 
 imposing variety of 
 splendidly furtive re- 
 treats. There is no 
 place on earth — and 
 this isn't on earth — 
 where susceptible lads and impressionable lassies can 
 so admirably learn not to know each other as in mid- 
 Atlantic, on the big raft that is called a ship. It 
 is there that the genus Flirt attains its supreme 
 fruition, and that hearts are trumps, all the way 
 over. 
 
 There was a time when the ballroom was looked 
 
 131 
 
132 The Great Wet Way 
 
 upon as the great parade-ground of the Flirt, and 
 the mazy dance was regarded as the one affection- 
 ate pastime for palpitant hearts. That time has 
 long since passed; modern improvements have killed 
 it dead. The ballroom, with its eligible men, all 
 labelled, and its marriageable girls, with anxious 
 mommers waiting for them by the wall, was good 
 enough in its way. Everything is good enough in 
 its way until something better happens. This is a 
 great age: only wait, and something better is sure 
 to happen. 
 
 The curious thing about the ocean steamship 
 flirtation is that nobody is labelled. That is the 
 great charm of the pursuit — for the men! And 
 after all, why should men invariably be disconcerted 
 by the label on the jar? In a ballroom, the sweet 
 young ingenue knows the men who are married, and 
 carefully avoids them. She reasons, sanely enough, 
 that they have been appropriated; that they are not 
 free; that it would be waste of time to dance with 
 another woman's husband; in fact, that it would be 
 foolish. In the ballroom, the "object matrimony" 
 legend is inevitably instilled into the girl-heart by 
 her dowager mommer, who sits clucking by the wall 
 like an affectionate hen. 
 
 This has always been rather rough on the men. 
 The ethics of a sound, a genuine, and a delicious 
 flirtation do not insist upon an unhappy ending — 
 
Flirtations 
 
 133 
 
 I mean, of course, a happy ending. The utter and 
 deliberate Flirt is untrammelled by any necessity 
 to " support " his pretty little accomplice for life. 
 He is a butterfly, busily winging his way from one 
 fair flower to the other. And on the transatlantic 
 steamship he can " butterfly " for all he is worth 
 without shocking the conventions. 
 
 It is the " married man " who, on earth, finds 
 that iron-bound conventions nip him in the bud. It 
 is the "married man" precisely who at sea dis- 
 covers that the ship is his, with all that is delightful 
 therein. His label is discarded the very instant he 
 crosses the gang-plank. He is young, and free, 
 and ardent, and charming again. Nobody can pos- 
 sibly tell that he is married. A woman generally 
 looks married. In some 
 indescribable way, it is 
 nearly always possible 
 to detect a girl who is 
 wedded. But a man must 
 be ostentatiously labelled 
 before the glad tidings 
 can prevail. Matrimony 
 sets no stamp on the man. 
 It used to be that the 
 " married man " was 
 known by his neatness, 
 his array of buttons all 
 
134 The Great Wet Way 
 
 in the right place, his sedately fresh attire. That 
 is no longer the case. Self-respecting and emanci- 
 pated wives have other fish to fry. 
 
 The "married man" on board ship very often 
 looks like a mere laughing lad. He is bright, clean- 
 shaven, alert, and fearfully affectionate. There is 
 nothing in his make-up to indicate that he has a 
 wife and children on the distant shore. Nobody 
 knows him. He has come on board determined 
 not to worry, and worry he won't. He has taken to 
 the ship for rest and recreation, and he will find 
 both! He scans the galaxy of travelling maidens 
 with an eager eye, and makes his selection. Usually 
 his first work is to tip the deck-steward, and tell 
 that susceptible and highly-tippable official where 
 to place his steamer-chair. He points to the girl 
 he has chosen. 
 
 It is not often that the poor " married man " 
 finds himself let loose in a " rosebud garden of 
 girls," to prowl around at his sweet will. On land, 
 his condition is as restricted as that of a jar of 
 marmalade that would like to pose as strawberry, 
 jam, but can't, owing to the label, and the pure- food 
 laws, , and all that sort of thing. At sea, he can 
 keep the story of his past to himself — and he 
 generally does !— until it is time to say a fond fare- 
 well on the landing-stage. 
 
 In criminal law, every man is innocent until he 
 has been proved guilty. On board ship, every fel- 
 
Flirtations 
 
 *35 
 
 low is unmarried until he has been proved married. 
 The man who appropriates the prettiest girl on the 
 ship, who chats with her behind the life-boats, 
 stands with her by the rail looking into the darkening 
 sea, and reads poetry with her in the silence of the 
 topmost deck, may be married, and most certainly is, 
 but it would be cruel to tell her so, would it not ? The 
 "married man" always hates to do cruel things. Why 
 scatter the illusions 
 of the prettiest girl 
 on the ship? 
 
 If the prettiest 
 girl on the ship hap- 
 pens to be American, 
 which is usually the 
 case, she can hoist 
 any flirt by his own 
 petard. She is not 
 worrying a bit. She 
 places her father in 
 the smokeroom, and 
 sees that he plays bridge; she sits her mother with 
 some awfully nice ladies who are embroidering 
 beautiful things of the useless persuasion. They 
 have no qualms. They are not crossing the Atlantic 
 for the express purpose of finding a husband for 
 their pretty girl. She may be a flirt; if she is not, 
 she will miss lots of fun. She can cope with any 
 persuasive and insinuating Lothario. 
 
136 The Great Wet Way 
 
 It is only when the prettiest girl is English that 
 the butterfly Benedict is looked upon with serious 
 eyes. The English girl cannot chain her father tee 
 the smokeroom, or her mother to the knitting- 
 needles. Father and mother see that she is flirting. 
 What is she flirting with? Is he of good family? 
 Is he in a "position" to marry? Has he a respect- 
 able income? English parents always mean business." 
 They are practical and unsentimental. To them, a 
 steamship flirtation is just the same as any other. 
 What they want to know is if he can support their 
 darling in the luxury to which she has been ao. 
 customed. 
 
 Perhaps he could, if he were not supporting some 
 other couple's darling. The English parents make 
 it their business to institute enquiries. They tackle; 
 the poor fond man himself, and learn to their horror 
 that he is not only a husband, but a father. H« 
 means no ill. He will not lie to them. He is per- 
 fectly innocuous. Surely a man, on the Atlantic 
 Ocean, is not obliged to marry every girl he flirts 
 with. Why, he has taken this trip for rest and rec- 
 reation, and these cold-blooded English propositions 
 actually dare to suggest 
 
 The American girl never asks a man to tell her 
 the story of his life. She is generally too busy 
 telling him hers. Nor will she cease to talk with 
 him, in prim disgust, if she hears that he has been 
 led to the altar. It may have happened very long 
 
'Her father and mother see that she is flirting" 
 
Flirtations 137 
 
 ago, and he may have nearly forgotten it. After all 
 a man is not a criminal, to be ostracised from all 
 flirtation, because somewhere beyond the horizon 
 there is some woman who perhaps is praying for him 
 — and who perhaps isn't ! The American girl takes 
 the goods that the gods send, and asks no questions. 
 She may be sentimental, but it is not in the power of 
 every Tom, Dick and Harry on an ocean steamship 
 to appeal to her sentiment. 
 
 There is one thing that the pretty girl on board 
 ship, who is flirting with a "married man," will al- 
 ways discover, when she knows that he is married. 
 It is, that he " doesn't get along with his wife." He 
 doesn't know why it is, but, somehow or other, she 
 is not sympathetic. She doesn't understand him.' 
 She is a nice woman, otherwise he would never have 
 married her, but she is unresponsive, and — -oh, he 
 does need the joy of appreciation! There is abso- 
 lutely no excuse for divorce, for she is a good 
 soul; still he has a dreary home-life. He is much 
 to be pitied. It is really astonishing what a num- 
 ber of unhappy husbands an ocean steamship shel- 
 ters. The marital unhappiness seems to come on 
 during the trip. 
 
 " I'm so sorry for that young fellow who sits 
 by me at table," said the prettiest girl on the ship 
 to me, some time ago. " He is married. He mar- 
 ried when he was a mere boy, before he realised 
 what he was doing, and now he regrets it with every 
 
138 The Great Wet Way 
 
 breath that he takes. It is dreadful to think of, 
 isn't it?" 
 
 It was not dreadful, but rather curious. Three 
 days previously, as we were about to leave New 
 York, I saw him fondly embracing his wife by the 
 gang-plank, and promising to write by every mail, 
 and — he added, " Do let the kids send me a line." 
 
 Poor chap! The pure ozone of the Atlantic 
 Ocean was probably responsible for his strange hal- 
 lucination. In three days it had done its fell work. 
 This is the real peril of the Atlantic of which sea- 
 men do not prate. 
 
 For the benefit of parents who are novices on the 
 ocean, it would simplify matters a good deal if the 
 transatlantic Lothario were labelled. Still after a 
 little experience, he is not a difficult problem. It 
 may be set down as an unvarying rule that the 
 nicest men on the ship are married. Whenever 
 you see a young man who is " the life and soul of 
 the party," who is jovial, unabashed, always danc- 
 ing attendance on the ladies, perpetually self-sacri- 
 ficing in his efforts to make them comfortable — 
 well, he's married. The man who is the best dancer 
 at the ship's hop, whose name is written on the 
 programmes of all the choicest feminine pets of the 
 passenger list, and whose contempt for the smoke- 
 room hermits is the most picturesquely expressed — 
 is the married man. 
 
 At the ship's dance the smokeroom is filled with 
 
Flirtations 139 
 
 non-dancing men, who consume unlimited tobacco 
 in honour of the occasion, and play frenzied bridge 
 and poker. These non-dancing men have no use for 
 the frivolities outside, could not be bought to take 
 part in such Coney Island amusements and speak 
 feelingly of the peaceful life. These are the elig- 
 ibles, the unmarried. They leave the social pas- 
 times of the ship to the butterflies, who are always 
 married. They are careful. They decline to com- 
 promise themselves. They look askance at the 
 parents of pretty girls. They will not permit any 
 dowager mommer to " make a set " for them. They 
 are not anxious to be " run after " and cornered. 
 They are prudent, and avoid rousing fond hopes in 
 the breasts of the susceptible. They steer clear of 
 foolish entanglements. 
 
 What cares the " married man"? Nothing at all. 
 His heart is as light as gossamer. He is " fancy free." 
 He is having the time of his life. For him the 
 gaieties of the ship have been organised. Watch 
 him two-stepping down the deck, in the very latest 
 style, with one pretty girl after another clasped un- 
 resistingly to his frilled and spotless shirt-front I He 
 is whispering sweet nothings in her ear. He is tick- 
 ling her creamy cheek with his moustache, if he hap- 
 pens to possess one, and if he doesn't he gets along 
 very well — thanks — and he is saying sentimental 
 things about the moonlight on the ocean. The longer 
 he has been married, the nicer he is. 
 
140 The Great Wet Way 
 
 If you look upon this in a certain light — and it 
 must be a very certain light — you will perceive that 
 it is a delicate compliment to women. For the " mar- 
 ried man " proves that wedded life has done much 
 
 for him. It has taught him how to appreciate the sex 
 in general. He likes nearly all the women — except 
 the very ugly ones. He can anticipate their wishes 
 and make their trip worth while. And he does. He 
 certainly does. 
 
 You see that handsome, loquacious Adonis, with the 
 pretty girl in white? He has decided that she has 
 been dancing too much. He is telling her how fool- 
 
flirtations H 1 
 
 1'sh it is for her to over-dance, and exhaust herself. 
 He is arranging her cloak, so that she shall not catch 
 cold in the night air, for after a dance girls are par- 
 ticularly susceptible to cold. She is walking away 
 with him to some quieter part of the ship, because 
 he thinks it will be good for her. He is very un- 
 selfish. Much as he loves dancing, he will leave the 
 giddy scene for her sake, and repair to the gloomy 
 side of the ship, where there is no light, and life, 
 and music, and festivity. She looks so tired, and he 
 is so solicitous. Well, he's married. 
 
 Very often the gossip of the ship has it that Mr. 
 So-and-So is engaged to the nice girl whose shadow 
 he has become. All the other men on the boat, in 
 brotherly consideration, keep away, unwilling to pose 
 as spoil-sports. Mr. So-and-So never leaves her 
 side. He is at breakfast with her (a tip to the sec- 
 ond steward has yielded him the desired proximity 
 at the saloon table) ; he is at luncheon with her, and 
 through every course of the long dinner he is her 
 other self. He promenades the deck with her; he 
 sits beside her when she is steamer-chaired; he ar- 
 ranges her rugs around her; he fetches and carries 
 for her; he frowns if she speaks to anybody. Every- 
 body on the ship, from the Captain downwards, says 
 that such a case has never before been seen. It is 
 a genuine instance of love at first sight. Well, he's 
 married. 
 
 Whenever you see a diffident, ramshackle sort of 
 
142 The Great Wet Way 
 
 a creature, who sits alone, or promenades the deck 
 with the New England spinster, and is somewhat 
 surly, and inclined to over-read, and to over-sit, and 
 to over-sleep ; who has no life and no geniality, who 
 takes a cynical view of the trip, and seems to want 
 to get to wherever he is going — well, he's unmarried. 
 
 The " married man " never wants to get there — 
 especially when he is going home. He is a philos- 
 opher, satisfied with the present. An anxiety to get 
 anywhere when you are in charming society is a 
 sort of left-handed compliment to the charming 
 society. The " married man " is convinced that the 
 ocean steamship is a good thing, and that he can en- 
 joy himself more comfortably on board than would 
 be possible in either London or New York. The 
 life appeals to him — a butterfly in a " rosebud gar- 
 den of girls." People who are always looking for- 
 ward to something gorgeous in the future — which 
 generally forgets to happen — are bores. They are 
 also ingrates. The present is a " bird in the hand," 
 the future is the " two in the bush." The " married 
 man " is satisfied to leave the future to the vapid 
 little nincompoops who are afraid that the girls 
 are " setting their caps " for them. All this makes 
 the "married man" delighted. Without him the 
 trip would be as dreary as the desert of Sahara. He 
 is positively fluffy with irresponsible joy. 
 
 Do not imagine for one moment that the "mar- 
 ried man " is a disturber of the feminine peace. If 
 
Flirtations 
 
 H3 
 
 he be, it is because the feminine peace is perfectly- 
 willing and anxious to be disturbed. Girls do not 
 invariably cross the ocean for their health, or just 
 to get somewhere. They will flirt with somebody 
 or something, or know the reason why. On board 
 ship the maiden is not haughty, or unapproachable. 
 If you wish her good-day, she does not draw herself 
 up to her full height, and exclaim, " Sir! " She is 
 waiting for somebody to wish her good-day, and is 
 perfectly prepared to take the initiative, if necessary. 
 Even the unlovely girl, who on earth has a dull 
 time of it, discovers different conditions on the 
 ocean. With a little energy, and by the exercise 
 of a certain amount 
 of will-power, she 
 often succeeds in 
 unhooking a flirta- 
 tion. She is very 
 vivacious, and much 
 to the point. She 
 is a hard-worker, 
 and she seems to be 
 on her mettle. The 
 conventions of the 
 ship dispense with 
 formal introduc- 
 tions, and she never 
 has to wait for 
 somebody to ask 
 
144 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 to be introduced to her. The formal introduction 
 is the undoing of so many women on dry land. It 
 is a pity that the suffragette does not denounce the 
 formal introduction. It is fatal. 
 
 During one trip I took particular pleasure in 
 watching the "work" of one energetic maiden, who 
 — poor thing! — belonged to the ranks of the un- 
 wanted. She lay idle for a day — just to give the ship 
 a chance to settle itself, and also to make certain that 
 she was likely to be unattached during the trip. At 
 the end of the day she had evidently made up her 
 mind that there was nothing doing. So she buckled 
 on her armour, like a brave little Joan of Arc, and 
 rushed into the fray. She had one 
 speech that she relied upon to help 
 her. I heard her deliver it to eight 
 men. 
 
 " I think Parrus is just a horrid 
 place," she said. " I was there for 
 two weeks, and, honesdy, I was 
 afraid to go out. The men stare at 
 you so ! They turn round, and look 
 at you, and — several times, I was fol- 
 lowed. I was so scared that I didn't 
 know what to do. Now, I've lived 
 in New York all my life, and I can 
 safely say that I have never been followed. It is 
 very distressing, is it not? Give me American men 
 any day. To talk of the politeness and the courtesy 
 
Flirtations 
 
 145 
 
 of the Frenchman is ridiculous. What woman likes 
 being ogled in the public streets by these persistent 
 mashers? Several times, I reached my hotel trem- 
 bling and crying. I have never been accustomed 
 to such treatment by American men." 
 
 Evidently American men have better taste than 
 their French brothers. The victim of Paris' wiles, 
 however, by injecting the " personal note " into her 
 promiscuous remarks, managed to gain attention. It 
 is the " personal note" that tells. A girl on board 
 ship can talk for hours on impersonal matters, and 
 
146 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 discuss the classics in every style, without spearing a 
 flirtation. Let her get personal, and the result is 
 exactly otherwise. 
 
 In the case I have just mentioned, success was 
 reached at the end of the third day. On day No. 4 
 I saw the denouncer of poor old Paris promenading 
 the deck with a tired-looking old specimen, from the 
 wooly west, and she never released him until the 
 boat docked in Hoboken. On land, this amiable 
 creature might have worked for years, and probably 
 had, without winning. The old specimen on board 
 
 is easy prey, and he is always 
 there. There is no fool like 
 an old fool. 
 
 One of the most amusing 
 
 flirtations I have ever seen, 
 
 was that of a very nice litde 
 
 girl with her violin-teacher. 
 
 He was going abroad to see 
 
 his people, and she, with her 
 
 mommer, had conceived the 
 
 delightful idea of making the 
 
 same trip. Now, I always 
 
 think that anybody who 
 
 teaches the violin, must have 
 
 Tom the constitution of a horse, 
 
 and must be filled with loathing for his unhappy 
 
 pupils. Perhaps this particular teacher shared my 
 
 feelings as we left New York. At any rate, his 
 
Flirtations 147 
 
 pretty pupil and her mommer did not seem inex- 
 pressibly dear to him. 
 
 But no sooner had we plunged into the bounding 
 billows than that musical little lassie left her violin 
 to the mercies of her stateroom stewardess, and 
 "made " for the teacher. Mommer had evidently 
 traversed the Atlantic before. Mommer knew what 
 she was about. The violin teacher, after tempo- 
 rary struggle for liberty, born of the instinct of self- 
 preservation, succumbed. She was a pretty girl, and 
 an enthusiast. She was beside him all day, in an 
 ecstasy of music. She looked into his eyes with the 
 tender melancholy of Chopin ; she sat in silent reverie 
 with the dreamy wistfulness of Tschaikowsky ; she 
 was sometimes roused to the fervour and thunder of 
 Wagner; she was light and coquettish in the merry 
 moods of Planquette and Lecocq, and she never lost 
 an opportunity of catering to the music that was in 
 him. 
 
 The poor man was never left alone for a moment. 
 She was known on the ship as his " star " pupil. She 
 played at the concert, and he accompanied her. She 
 was congratulated for his sake, and he was congrat- 
 ulated for hers. At first he used to try to run away, 
 but he gave that up, for she followed him — and 
 mommer followed her 1 This girl had been " study- 
 ing " with him for a year, and there had been no flir- 
 tation. On land, escape is always possible. There 
 are so many places to hide in. It was the sea that 
 
148 The Great Wet Way 
 
 did for him. It was the Atlantic Ocean that mads: 
 the violin teacher look so good to her. 
 
 Whether this instructor ever succeeded in seeing; 
 his people, I never knew. It seemed highly improb- 
 able. In Amsterdam whom should I meet but 
 teacher, and pupil, and mommer? In Brussels, 
 whom should I note, seated at a cafe, but teacher, 
 and pupil, and mommer? Even in Paris, which is a 
 silly place for purposes of flirtation, there, on the 
 crowded Boulevards, I saw that thin young violin 
 teacher being towed along by pupil and mommer, 
 who were protecting him from the insults of Boule- 
 vard life. What can there be in the Atlantic Ocean's 
 ozone to achieve such wondrous results? Someday, 
 perhaps, we shall know. I incline to the belief that 
 it is a germ, a theory which always explains every* 
 thing, and nothing, and is therefore very useful. 
 
 I have apparently omitted the " married woman " 
 from the list of transatlantic flirts. Please do not 
 think that the " married woman " sits by herself all 
 day, and crochets comforters for the dear one, or 
 even embroiders table-centres for " the home." The 
 "married woman" is very often young and pretty, 
 and there is no reason on earth why she shouldn't be. 
 
 She may have cried her eyes out on the dock, as 
 she said good-bye to the cherished soul who had 
 given her his name, and who was obliged to stay at 
 home and slave for a living. She may have looked 
 so intensely miserable that your heart went out to 
 
Flirtations H9 
 
 her in swiftest sympathy, and the horrors of parting 
 were brought vividly home to you. 
 
 Time heals all wounds — even on land. At sea it 
 heals them by rapid-transit methods that do the work 
 in a day, and sometimes sooner. The poor little wife, 
 whose acute grief at the dock touched you so impres- 
 sively, has dried her tears by the time the boat has 
 passed Fire Island. Why grieve? He would not 
 wish her to grieve. He would tell her to cheer up, 
 and have a good time. And she does. She does not 
 tat, or knit. She looks around her with altruistic 
 eyes, and — well, she may as well make the best of it. 
 
 She could seek the acquaintanceship of some very 
 nice old ladies who are members of the Woman's 
 Christian Temperance Union, and very good com- 
 pany. She could sit in the music-room (I regret to 
 say that I have heard it called the hennery) and talk 
 about servants, and household expenses, and little 
 Susan's pinafores, with some sweet and domesticated 
 matrons whom it would be a pleasure to know. She 
 could parade the deck with the New England spin- 
 ster, and have a very jolly time listening to that 
 siren's persiflage. 
 
 Somehow or other, she indulges in none of these 
 simple pastimes. Before long you note that she 
 appears to be killing time quite agreeably with an 
 exceedingly nice-looking young man, who is most 
 attentive. Of course, she is telling him all about her 
 husband, and her happy home life, and discoursing 
 
I JO 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 on the joys of matrimony. He seems extremely in- 
 terested. It is an interesting topic. She never 
 appears to exhaust it either. Often, as you are tak- 
 ing your last prowl around the deck, before turning 
 in for the night, you come across them where the 
 
 lights are low, 
 talking in s u b - 
 dued tones, and 
 looking up at the 
 stars. Perhaps he 
 saw her grief at 
 the dock, as hubby 
 faded into the 
 shadows, and is 
 trying to comfort 
 ti.a£. her aching heart. 
 When you say 
 good-bye to the transatlantic passengers at the dock, 
 and mop the furtive tears from your eyes as you 
 see their anguish and heart-wrench, you imagine that 
 he — or she — will weep steadily all the way over, and 
 that there will be no solace, no balm in Gilead. Try 
 and rid yourself of this erroneous belief. It is a 
 mortal error. The transatlantic passenger, whether 
 he, she, married, or unmarried, will be as jolly as a 
 sandboy precisely one hour after you have dragged 
 yourself wearily away from the cruel dock to the 
 deserted home. You can safely reckon upon the At- 
 lantic ozone to kill all grief, however demonstrative 
 
Flirtations 
 
 IP 
 
 it may have been in your presence. And is not that 
 a glorious knowledge? Is it not food for rejoicing? 
 
 'Tis better thus, surely. The lassie will find recre- 
 ation, the lad will unearth a pastime, the Benedict 
 will secure comfort, the matron will discover salve. 
 There is a very pretty song called, " Oh, Dry Those 
 Tears," but nobody need sing it to the ocean travel- 
 ler. His tears will dry spontaneously in the pleasant 
 warmth of the flirtatious steamship. The way peo- 
 ple weep at the farewell dock is extraordinary, but 
 it is a custom, and all nicely regulated men and 
 women like to do the right thing. It is always a 
 comfort to know that one has done the right thing. 
 Women sail away with red noses, and men with sus- 
 piciously rosy eyelids, and they are the very people 
 who will be the merriest and most flirtatious people 
 on board. The girl who is the most inveterate flirt 
 on the ship is the girl who cried the most bitterly at 
 the dock. The man whose farewells were the most 
 protracted and painful, and whose agony you could 
 scarcely bear to look at, is the man you will note as 
 the gayest Lothario of the throng. 
 
 The swirl of the Atlantic seems to give the im- 
 
152 The Great Wet Way 
 
 petus to flirtation, and those who can resist it are the 
 freaks of the trip. Of course, it is possible to abstain. 
 The man who is travelling with his wife is often able 
 to abstain. She sees to that. The wife who is trav- 
 elling with her husband is also able to abstain, unless 
 he happens to be busy in the smokeroom playing 
 bridge. It is possible not to flirt, but it is very diffi- 
 cult, and it is very foolish to try not to do so. If 
 you fail, you feel so silly. You realise that your will- 
 power is not in good condition. You find yourself 
 at it in spite of your resolutions. Moreover, why be 
 eccentric? Why try to attract attention by marked 
 originality, which is not all that it is cracked up to 
 be? Why be a non-flirt, surrounded on all sides by 
 flirts? I have no patience with such people, but I 
 am obliged to admit that I have met very few of 
 them. 
 
 What the briny deep doesn't do to the loving heart 
 is not worth mentioning. 
 
VIII 
 
 PATRIOTISM 
 
 UPPOSE that just to 
 "make conversation " a 
 perfect stranger came up 
 to you, and told you that 
 he considered the suit of 
 clothes you were wear- 
 ing the worst-fitting gar- 
 ments he had ever seen; 
 that the cut was inartis- 
 tic, the cloth poor and 
 badly produced, and the 
 general effect displeasing. Suppose he went on to 
 say that the only tailor who could make a decent 
 suit of clothes was his own, and asked you to cast 
 an eye on his irreproachable attire, admirably con- 
 ceived, faultlessly executed, comfortable, and yet pic- 
 turesque. You would probably look upon this per- 
 fect stranger as an ill-bred boor, not worth answer- 
 ing, arid bestowing upon him a haughty look of 
 frigid contempt, you would turn on your heel and 
 leave him, lamenting. You would think that he 
 was lacking in the very first elements of courtesy. 
 
 On board ship you will meet scores of strange 
 people who, while they would hesitate at abusing 
 
 153 
 
154 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 your clothes, will make most uncomplimentary re- 
 marks about your country. They will tell you that 
 they do not like your country at all ; that they spent 
 a few months there, and found everything most prim- 
 itive, and behind-the-times ; that they laughed at one 
 thing, and fumed at another, and that if you wanted 
 to see civilisation in its really advanced form, you 
 must visit their country — the only country in the 
 world worth living in, and worth studying. 
 
 At this you may not take umbrage. Even though 
 such remarks may be as rude and as unnecessary as 
 S sg^ comments about your 
 
 ^/fKjE ^S^ clothes and your per- 
 
 sonal appearance, you 
 must smile agreeably, 
 and show no sign of vex- 
 ation. For the people 
 who boom their own 
 country at the expense 
 of yours, ar e — P A - 
 TRIOTSr 
 
 You always meet pa- 
 triots on an ocean steamship. There is no way 
 of escaping from them. They are as thick and 
 as inevitable as flies at a country boarding-house 
 breakfast-table in June, and they are even more ag- 
 gressive. However, you can have a great deal of 
 fun with them. You can "draw them out," and 
 revel in their absurdities, and you can study bigotry, 
 
Patriotism i$$ 
 
 provincialism, and egotism on an ocean steamship 
 as you can study them nowhere else. You find 
 patriotism there in luxuriance and perfection. It is 
 tinsel patriotism, of course, but it masquerades as 
 the genuine article, just as many cheap things do 
 ephemeral duty for more expensive ones. It is imi- 
 tation patriotism. It is like the string of paste beads 
 that Sarah Jane wears around her neck on Sunday, 
 in flattering imitation of the gems she has noticed on 
 her mistress' throat when that lady went forth to 
 the opera. 
 
 Real patriotism is very much like religion — a sen- 
 timent not expressed, but felt in the innermost re- 
 cesses. You are born in a certain country, just as 
 you are born to a certain religion. Personal choice, 
 in either case, is out of the question. You love your 
 country unreasoningly, with all its faults; you re- 
 spect your religion in a similar way, even though 
 you may not live up to it. This is something deep- 
 down and ineradicable. It is not particularly noble, 
 when it is mere instinct, but it may emerge from 
 that, and become intelligent appreciation and artis- 
 tic satisfaction. 
 
 The real patriots, on an ocean steamer, are not 
 the people who butt in on your natal idiosyncrasies, 
 who tread on your pet corns, and who say impolite 
 things with a sort of polite belligerency. They are 
 not the people whose object it is to force your re- 
 luctant admission that their country is better than 
 
The Great Wet Way 
 
 #B/V» 
 
 yours. The real patriots are not controversialists; 
 they are not the vain and foolish folks who feel a 
 contempt for what they do not possess. The real 
 patriots are the silent people. They are unnoticea- 
 ble. They would scorn to subject their love of 
 country to idle argument with strangers. They are 
 serious, and not at all amusing. It is the others, the 
 tinsel patriots, of whom there is a copious supply on 
 every steamship, that add to the gaiety of nations — 
 generally the nations to which they do not belong, 
 but not infrequently to the very nations that claim 
 them. 
 
 The tinsel patriot is the person who loves his 
 country just because it is his country. He can see 
 no good in any other that does not chance to have 
 produced him. His country must be the best, be- 
 cause — well, there he is, an unanswerable argu- 
 ment in its favour, with his wife, and his children. 
 He knows little of his country's history, and cares 
 less, and as for any other country's history, it 
 would be waste of time to bother with it. This 
 delicious vanity and this exquisite conceit make 
 
Patriotism 1 £7 
 
 the tinsel patriot quite an entertaining pastime, 
 humour. 
 
 The tinsel patriot of England pats himself on the 
 back, and says what a good boy is he as he leaves 
 the United States. The tinsel patriot of the United 
 States, who has " done " Europe in a hurry, buys an 
 American flag, and waves it ostentatiously on the 
 home-going steamer. That the subject of patriot- 
 ism is almost sacred never occurs to them. They 
 are pleased with themselves, and they patronise their 
 country very charmingly indeed. It is the least that 
 they can do to show their country that it did a 
 clever thing when it made itself theirs. 
 
 The tinsel patriot is lacking in all imagination. 
 He can imagine nothing good in any country that 
 has so far forgotten itself as to deny him birth. He 
 visits other countries just to revel in their imperfec- 
 tions, and these imperfections it is his pleasing duty 
 to " rub in." He glories in his work. His com- 
 parisons are always " odorous," and he spends his 
 time looking for trouble, which he usually finds 
 waiting for him. ■ His patriotism is laid on with 
 a trowel. It is inflicted upon every listener. It 
 is heard above the murmur of the Atlantic on deck; 
 it fights its way through the fumes of the smoke- 
 room; it buzzes in the conversation at the dinner 
 table; in fact, it makes things lively all the way 
 over — and whichever way it is! It is a great rec- 
 reation for the cosmopolitan hearer — the man who 
 
158 The Great Wet Way 
 
 finds "books in the running brooks, sermons in 
 stones, and good in everything." 
 
 The tinsel patriot loves to hear himself talk, 
 and — does not talk in whispers. He wants the 
 whole world to hear what he has to say! His 
 impressions, he will tell you, with delightful 
 diffidence, are nothing more than cursory impres- 
 sions, but they are to the point. He declines to 
 beat about the bush. What he has seen, he has seen, 
 and he intends to abide by his decision. And he 
 certainly will. The tinsel patriot takes very un- 
 kindly to argument — if he can find anybody foolish 
 enough to argue with him. When I am there he 
 can find me I I love to argue with him. Whatever 
 his nationality may be, I love to plunge with him 
 into dispute. Fiendish? Perhaps. But sometimes 
 time drags, and I do not play shuffleboard. When 
 the morn is bright on deck, I like to seek out the 
 merry tinsel patriot, and let him give me fits. This 
 may be a morbid taste, but 'tis mine own. On one 
 occasion I met an Englishman who was going home 
 with his wife and his sister-in-law, after six weeks 
 spent in the United States. He was very droll. 
 
 " You see this watch," he said, holding up a gold 
 hunter. " Well, I kept it at London time all the 
 while I was in America. I simply would not change 
 it. It seemed to me that to set my watch by the New 
 York clocks would be unpatriotic. It made me feel 
 that I was not so far away when I could look at my 
 
Patriotism 159 
 
 watch, and see what ..— 1 ^ft, 
 
 time it was in London." ifjr*- -oPa 
 
 "It must have been dtfc,., A>t Lj ^2w/ I v. 
 very awkward," I sug- |H8r/Y%4j) jjjm ';'■ 
 gested, thinking of the llj^KA^J^BfrLJ ■ 
 discomfort of break- ''iM^jiWpil' 1 
 fasting in New York '-HP*" : " 
 
 when his watch indicated two o'clock in the after- 
 noon; of lunching at six o'clock in the evening, and 
 of dining in the wee sma' hours of the morning. 
 
 "Not at all," he said. "I got in the habit of 
 deducting five hours. I had to make allowances for 
 so much when. I was in the United States that I 
 had no objection to doing it in the matter of time. 
 I suppose if I had been going to live in the United 
 States, I should have been obliged to adopt the time 
 of the country. I should not have done it without a 
 great struggle." 
 
 He was very proud of himself. He told every- 
 body of his remarkable sacrifice. He confided to all 
 the Americans on the boat that he was delighted to 
 be going home, carrying with him the unbudging 
 London time. And then he launched into the usual 
 dissertations of the tinsel English patriot, on the over- 
 heated American rooms, and the bumpy American 
 streets, and the discord and din of New York. He 
 liked to jump out of his bed in the morning, and 
 crack the ice in the water pitcher, instead of finding 
 himself in a steam-heated apartment, ready to take 
 
160 The Great Wet Way 
 
 cold the instant he went out. He wouldn't live in 
 New York if you laid gold at his feet. And no- 
 body offered to do this. 
 
 His wife and his sister-in-law nodded their heads 
 approvingly. They felt that he was doing his duty 
 to his country by his impoliteness, which was, of 
 course, patriotism. Yet this man was otherwise 
 courteous. He would have been careful to avoid 
 hurting the feelings of his fellowmen in any other 
 direction. The tinsel patriot is like the dog with a 
 bone. The dog may be a kind, gentle, docile, and 
 sympathetic animal, but when he has a bone, he 
 growls — leave him with it, and beware of him. 
 
 Many people travel, but few of them are trav- 
 ellers. They are merely tourists. English and 
 American tourists explore the recesses of the world, 
 apparently to discover points of resemblance with 
 their own little niche. When these recesses differ 
 from the niche, they differ unfavourably. I met a 
 Hungarian who was going back to Budapest, after 
 a year spent in New York and other American 
 cities. 
 
 " I'm tired of it," he said. " One can't get any- 
 thing to eat in the United States." 
 
 At first I thought that he was joking. There are 
 many things that Americans cannot do, but they 
 certainly can eatl It is a pastime of which they 
 are very fond. But the Hungarian was serious. He 
 missed his Hungarian dainties, his paprika'd deli- 
 
Patriotism 161 
 
 cacies and the singularities of his native fare. I 
 argued with him pathetically, for I had found Buda- 
 pest's gastronomy somewhat difficult to fathom. He 
 persisted. There was nothing to eat in America — 
 but mere food. One wearied of food. It grew 
 monotonous. He declined to go into detail. I ex- 
 patiated touchingly on the glory of New York's res- 
 taurants, and sketched a few fashionable "lobster- 
 palaces," where the epicures of the world had found 
 nothing to criticise. 
 
 " I've been everywhere," he said, " and I was 
 always hungry. American fare would kill me. I 
 cannot endure it. So I return to my native land." 
 
 The French patriot has Paris Boulevards on the 
 brain. He is disgusted with Broadway, and he says 
 so in unqualified terms, 
 though he is always very 
 polite. When he meets 
 you on deck he takes off 
 his hat, even though he 
 be going to tell you that 
 he finds your country 
 most unsatisfactory. Of 
 course a steamship is^ 
 neutral ground, and the 
 patriot feels that he can 
 be disagreeable with im- 
 punity. Moreover, the 
 average tourist has 
 
1 62 The Great Wet Way 
 
 slighted his home for so long that he considers it 
 his duty to do all that he can for it, now that he is 
 returning. He has crossed the Atlantic for recre- 
 ation in other lands — the villain! Many people 
 might infer that his own land was not good enough 
 for him to recreate in. He hastens to correct the 
 error. 
 
 The American tinsel patriot is more amusing 
 than the European article, because he is more in- 
 genuous, and says such gorgeous things in defence 
 of his native heath. He is particularly anxious on 
 the return trip to let everybody know that what he 
 has seen abroad has pained him acutely; also that 
 he never intends to go again. (This is the patriot 
 who, invariably, will make another trip next year.) 
 He will probably be interviewed by the newspaper 
 of his native town, and will be lovely to the extent 
 of a column. 
 
 " New York has Parrus beaten to death," said an 
 American patriotess last year. " I was never so dis- 
 appointed in my life. The women dress as New 
 York women would scorn to dress, and I wouldn't 
 have my gowns made in Parrus if they gave them 
 to me for nothing " 
 
 " Do you mean to say you bought no dresses all 
 the time you were in Paris?" I asked, feeling quite 
 sure that she had a trunk full of Paris confections. 
 
 " Oh, I bought a few," she said carelessly. "I 
 want to show my New York friends what the much- 
 
Patriotism 163 
 
 advertised Parrus gowns are like — how inferior they 
 are. Why, I can go downtown in New York, and 
 buy an elegant suit, ready-made — pay a trifle for 
 alterations — and wear what everybody is wearing. 
 You can't do that in Parrus. You can hunt all over 
 Parrus for styles, and then have to tell a dress- 
 maker what you want. In New York you buy what 
 you have got to have, and there is no trouble at all." 
 
 This discussion was a bit too deep for me. Dry- 
 goods stores are very interesting, of course, and very 
 human, and the feminine patriot naturally glances 
 at them in her travels. Still, I did not find that I 
 could cope with the coquettish topic, so I switched 
 off to other subjects. 
 
 "Admit," I said, " that Paris is a beautiful city. 
 Now I ask you if there is anything in New York to 
 compare with the Place de la Concorde?" 
 
 Floored, this time, I thought to myself triumph- 
 antly, not that I hold any particular brief for the 
 Place de la Concorde. I was mistaken. The lady 
 was not floored by any means. 
 
 " Oh, the Place dee la Concorde is all right," she 
 said. " All right for Parrus. New York is too busy, 
 and too progressive to waste places like that. The 
 Place dee la Concorde is a wicked waste of space. 
 We should have it filled with beautiful office build- 
 ings, thirty stories high, fitted up with marble in- 
 side, and with express elevators running to the top 
 floor. The Place dee la Concorde looks very dreary 
 
164 The Great Wet Way 
 
 to me. You can have it, and you can give me Times 
 Square in New York. They are lazy people, the 
 French. I'd like to ask you where, in New York, 
 you would find men sitting for hours at cafes in the 
 open streets, drinking away the working day? " 
 
 "They are only drinking coffee," I piped meekly. 
 
 " They are an indolent set," she declared, getting 
 angry, " and you know it. You are just trying to 
 provoke me. If I found a husband of mine sitting 
 out in the street, and looking at all the good-for- 
 nothing creatures who pass by, well — he would hear 
 from me." 
 
 " Your husband, I suppose, goes into a bar-room 
 and takes a drink of whiskey?" 
 
 "Like a man!" she cried exultantly. "Yes, he 
 does, and I'm proud of it. He goes in for his high- 
 ball every evening, swallows it instantly, standing 
 up, and then goes about his business. That is our 
 way of doing things, and it is the only way. I've 
 no patience with the French people, and I don't 
 want to go to Parrus again." 
 
 " I love Paris " — maliciously. 
 
 " Then you ought to be ashamed to admit it. You 
 are not loyal. If I loved Parrus, I should think 
 myself a very poor sort of American " 
 
 " But many Americans love Paris, and live there 
 altogether." 
 
 "Let them ! " she asserted, in woman's unanswer- 
 able way. " They can have it. I was born in Syra- 
 
Patriotism 
 
 165 
 
 cuse, and I tell you that Syracuse could give lessons 
 to Parrus any day in the week. Parrus belongs to 
 the past; we belong to the future." And as she 
 went away, all ruffled up, she added, " And I'm 
 mighty sorry for you." 
 
 The tinsel patriot always has a duty to perform — 
 to himself. He is anxious to maintain his self- 
 respect by appreciating emphatically the environ- 
 
1 66 The Great Wet Way 
 
 ment that has made him what he thinks he is. Some, 
 times you see this brand of American patriot on 
 board, with American flags all over him, and he 
 takes good care that you shall notice them. He is 
 going home. He had saved up for this trip for 
 years, and has spent all his nice cash in other coun- 
 tries. Therefore the very least that he can do for 
 his own is to buy a few flags with the residue of 
 his depleted pocket-book, and wave them. He is very 
 argumentative and fractious. The real patriots look 
 at him in wonder, and marvel at his illogical com- 
 ments. They run away from him, when they see 
 him approaching, though I always find him mosfc 
 refreshing. 
 
 " London is a great one-horse village," remarked 
 a patriot recently, settling the status of the English 
 metropolis with one fell swoop. " I was there for 
 a month, and couldn't get a glass of ice-water in my 
 room to save my life! They don't seem to know 
 what it means. Why, in the United States, you can 
 get it anywhere, and it is looked upon as one of the 
 necessities of life. They are 'way behind the times 
 in London, with its rickety old busses and its tiny 
 trains. Everything is little over there. With us, 
 everything is big, and go-ahead, and significant." 
 
 " Was it your first visit there? " I asked. 
 
 " Oh, no," he replied promptly. " I go over every 
 year, but not because I like London. The ocean 
 trip does me a great deal of good, and that is why 
 
Patriotism 167 
 
 I go abroad. If I wanted to have a good time, I 
 should stay in New York. New York is good enough 
 for me." 
 
 That is one of the stock phrases — " New York 
 is good enough for me." It is like a creed. Every- 
 body says it. It is almost catechismal. You find 
 yourself murmuring it unconsciously. You whistle 
 it. The machinery of the ship seems to hum, " New 
 York is good enough for me." You repeat it to 
 foreigners on board who have not yet seen New 
 York; therefore, they cannot argue. Not that any- 
 body ever attempts to argue when this stock-phrase 
 is uttered. It admits of no argument, because it is 
 so personal. " New York is good enough for me " 
 does not insist that it is good enough for you. It 
 merely infers it ; it hopes it ; it suggests it ; it threatens 
 it. You may be plunged in a heated argument in 
 the smokeroom, and think that you are getting the 
 better of it. You have just cornered your opponent; 
 he is in a tight place, and you are wondering how 
 he is going to squeeze out of it, when he says, " New 
 York is good enough for me." 
 
 And there you are. That ends it. Further dis- 
 cussion is impossible. Nobody would think of say- 
 ing, "New York is good enough for you, perhaps, 
 but kindly explain why." That would be ludicrous. 
 You would be regarded as a lunatic. When any- 
 one says " New York is good enough for me," just 
 take off your hat, smile sweetly, and run away and 
 
1 68 The Great Wet Way 
 
 play. The Italian does not say, " Rome is good 
 enough for me," or the Frenchman, " Paris is good 
 enough for me," or the Englishman, " London is 
 good enough for me." It would sound very foolish, 
 and you would immediately rush in with fervid argu- 
 ments. You never argue when a New Yorker says, 
 " New York is good enough for me." The remark 
 is sanctuary. You cannot touch him; you would not 
 dare. He is safely entrenched, and you fume for a 
 moment, impotently, and — er — discuss the weather. 
 
 Once I met a very pretty American girl who had 
 made a tour through Italy. She had stayed for sev- 
 eral days in such towns as Verona, Padua, Ravenna, 
 Bologna, and Pisa. 
 
 " I was so amused," she said vivaciously. " Mom- 
 mer and I used to wander through the streets, and 
 we laughed to kill ourselves. Honestly, it was the 
 funniest experience I have ever had." 
 
 " I suppose the old buildings, the historical asso- 
 ciations, and the quaint customs of the people 
 amused you?" I suggested. 
 
 " Not at all," she replied. " It was the cut of the 
 shirt-waists we saw in the shop-windows. You 
 would have died ! Such things ! How any civilised 
 people could even think such jokes, mommer and I 
 couldn't imagine. We had thought of taking home 
 a little present to a girl friend of mine in Boston, 
 and I said to mommer that my friend would just 
 love a pretty shirt-waist from Verona or Padua, or 
 
The tinsel patriot" 
 
Patriotism 169 
 
 one of those old Italian towns. But she would have 
 been insulted if we had bought her such stuff as 
 we saw. I was surprised. I had heard so much of 
 Italy. Everybody advised us to go there. It is a 
 jay country." 
 
 "It is quite old," I murmured. 
 
 "Of course I know that," she said impetuously. 
 " But how these old countries can be satisfied to 
 stick in the mud, I can't for the life of me under- 
 stand. A trip across the ocean, which is nothing 
 nowadays, would show them what we are doing, 
 and teach them how to live like human beings. It 
 must be dreadful in Italy when all the Americans 
 have gone home. I should hate it. In the Spring 
 you do meet a few Americans at the Vatican and 
 at St. Peter's in Rome. They liven things up, and 
 make it seem a bit more home-like. I'm glad I have, 
 been, because I shall not have to go again. I would 
 sooner spend a day in Washington than a year in 
 Rome." 
 
 "Didn't your mother like it?" 
 
 " Oh, mommer was just miserable," she declared. 
 " She missed her tea dreadfully, and all the com- 
 forts we have at home. Mommer's getting on, 
 you know. It was like asking her to go backwards, 
 to rough it, and to put up with every inconvenience. 
 We had a much better time last year at Atlantic 
 City. There is always something to see there — 
 always new faces, and pretty gowns, and jolly people 
 
170 The Great Wet Way 
 
 who are living, and not existing. That is what we 
 like." 
 
 I was just going to make a few pungent remarks, 
 and see how this cunning little patriot took them, 
 when she suddenly said, " New York is good enough 
 for me." That put the brake on. 
 
 These must be extremely exaggerated cases of 
 tinsel patriotism, you may say. Not at all. They 
 may seem exaggerated, and that is why I set them 
 forth in their unvarnished beauty, but they are very 
 usual. They are quite peculiar to the ocean steam- 
 ship. As soon as he is landed the exuberance of 
 the tinsel patriot evaporates to a certain extent. He 
 is back again in the land that gave him birth. That 
 is quite enough for the land. The land has got 
 him again, and should be satisfied. It is no longer 
 necessary to throw any more bouquets. 
 
 Sometimes you meet a tinsel patriot who seems 
 to be looking for a fight. He is just aching to in- 
 flict his views upon somebody. He dominates the 
 ship, and declares that this is the happiest moment 
 of his life. He has been abroad for a long time, and 
 wants to meet real men, and real women, and to see 
 real life. He does not say this with any intonation 
 of genuine longing, but with a sort of " I-dare-you- 
 to-put-in-a-word " inflection. He is superbly con- 
 temptuous of every country he has visited. He went 
 abroad just to please his wife. Women get such 
 insane notions in their heads. Women are never 
 
Patriotism 
 
 171 
 
 satisfied to stay at home. The European bee is 
 always buzzing in their bonnets. The old Adam 
 lurks in this gentleman, for the woman tempted him, 
 and he did eat. 
 
 This patriot always poses as a " good fellow." In 
 the smokeroom he is very loud and demonstrative, 
 but — a " good fellow." On deck he buttonholes 
 you, and tells you "hard-luck" stories of how they 
 
 tried to "do" him in foreign cities, but how he 
 always won out. He asserted himself wherever he 
 was, he says. No matter if the over-charge amounted 
 to five cents, he refused to pay it. In Europe the 
 
172 The Great Wet Way 
 
 American was regarded as lawful prey. It was his 
 delight to rectify this error. 
 
 " In Amsterdam," he told me once, " I had the 
 entire hotel aroused. The cabby who brought me 
 from the station wanted to charge me three florins. 
 Now I knew that the exact fare was two florins and a 
 half. The fellow followed me into the lobby. I had 
 the proprietor of the hotel, the clerk, the treasurer, 
 and twenty guests around me. I was determined 
 not to give in, just because I couldn't speak Dutch. 
 I'm not a mean man, but I hate to be ' done ' — by 
 foreigners. And I won. I paid him two florins and 
 a half, and he went away." 
 
 " In New York you would probably have paid 
 five dollars," I said — like a fool, I admit. 
 
 " But Amsterdam isn't New York," he thun- 
 dered indignantly. " A little pesky dirt hole like 
 Amsterdam couldn't begin to be New York. I'm a 
 good American, I am, and I want to show these 
 people what we are made of. This cabby intended 
 to overcharge me twenty cents 1 Do you understand 
 — twenty cents? Well, I guess not. Oh, I don't say 
 that cabs are not cheap in Amsterdam, if we com- 
 pare them with our own. But why should we ? Why 
 should we be robbed? And we sire robbed every- 
 where. That is what I complain of all over Europe. 
 Wherever you go you are robbed, unless you are 
 out on the war-path. Talk of honesty — they don't 
 know what it means." 
 
Patriotism 173 
 
 He was happy. He had been looking for this, 
 and he was not going to relinquish it because we 
 all moved away in affright. He followed us up. 
 He told us how they had tried to rob him in Dresden 
 and Leipzig and Hanover; his awful experiences in 
 Switzerland; some happenings in Italy that were 
 nearly tragedies, and some events in France that tes- 
 tified to French rapacity. He treated us to new 
 stories every day, and we began to long for a sight 
 of the wretches who had tried to " do " him. I 
 learned subsequently, from the newspapers, that he 
 was a bank-president, who was investigated rather 
 sensationally during the recent panic. 
 
 Yet an ocean trip would be tedious without the 
 tinsel patriot — bless his heart ! He is generally very 
 harmless, though noisy. He is usually kind, and 
 he is very good to his mother. He means well. 
 There is no real malice in this abuse of the countries 
 in which he was not born. He just wants to show 
 those countries what they missed, and — that is par- 
 donable. After all, if you want to make a man feel 
 pleased with himself, all you have to do is to praise 
 his country. That is catering to his conceit. On 
 board ship he does it for himself. There was one 
 very popular actress who used to enlist the sympathy 
 of the reporters in every town she visited by telling 
 them that if she had been able to choose her birth- 
 place, she would have selected their town. The 
 number of cities in which she would like to have 
 
174 The Great Wet Way 
 
 been born was appalling. This is just an opposite 
 view of the tinsel patriot on the ocean steamship. 
 
 On the transatlantic liner tinsel patriotism runs 
 rife. If you had been born in a stable, you would 
 be a horse, and would neigh your equine delight 
 to all your fellow-passengers. You would say tri- 
 umphantly, " A stable is good enough for me," and 
 you would be quite sure that it was, and very thank- 
 ful that no kennel had been your birth-place. 
 
 Yet at home you are not so touchy. There are 
 even times when you are rather vexed that you were 
 born at all. It seems so unnecessary. 
 
IX 
 TIPPING 
 
 TIP, according to 
 my dictionary, is " a 
 sum of money giv- 
 en, as to a servant, 
 usually to secure 
 better or more 
 prompt service." A 
 tip, according to 
 my experience, is " a 
 sum of money, giv- 
 en, as to an adver- 
 sary, usually to se- 
 cure any kind of 
 service at all." The 
 literature of tipping is generally confined to the news- 
 papers, and occurs in the shape of letters to the 
 editor, signed " Free American," " Democratic 
 Reader," and other things equally untrammelled and 
 pleasing. 
 
 Whenever you get a chance to read such letters — 
 read, and digest them. Read them thoroughly. Con- 
 vince yourself of the sheer immorality and the utter 
 degradation of the tip. Learn that tipping is but 
 
 175 
 
176 The Great Wet Way 
 
 bribery in a modified form, leading nevertheless 
 along the sinister thoroughfare that abuts on cor- 
 ruption. Appreciate the sublime and self-sacrific- 
 ing sentiments of those sticklers for righteousness 
 who refuse to pander to a proceeding that must end 
 in the humiliation of the working classes. Listen to 
 the eloquent words of the anti-tippers, emancipated 
 and glorious, who, at great personal discomfort, 
 have shaken themselves free from the chains of 
 ugly, enthralling, and unnecessary slavery. 
 
 Then when you have completely assimilated all 
 these ideas, and have endorsed their accuracy and 
 their integrity, make up your mind not to go to 
 Europe via the Atlantic Ocean. As there is no other 
 way of getting there as yet open to the public, regis- 
 ter your determination not to go until there is. It 
 may be for ye-ears, and it may be for e-ever ! 
 
 If, however, stern necessity, or sterner pleasure 
 call you abroad, and the call will not be gainsaid, 
 you must make the best of a bad bargain. You 
 must be degraded; you must be humiliated; you 
 must pander to an ignoble sentiment; you must listen 
 to the clanking of those chains of ugly and unneces- 
 sary slavery. You must tip. Relinquish the anti- 
 tippers to their noble yet resuldess fight. Trusting 
 that it will find them, as it leaves you, in the enjoy- 
 ment of a perfect health of the season, and with 
 kind regards to their family, in which yours joins, 
 remain theirs truly. And let it go at that. 
 
Tipping 
 
 177 
 
 There is nothing that I enjoy so thoroughly as 
 a dispassionate observation of the various brands of 
 ocean-traveller, in this conflict with the ever-flour- 
 ishing institution of tipping. My study has been 
 so careful and so prolonged and so kaleidoscopic, 
 that I could positively tell the stewards the precise 
 amount that their various victims will contribute 
 to their welfare. Strangely enough, the stewards 
 
178 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 themselves never know, and make the most protesque 
 mistakes in their calculations. They are obse- 
 quiously polite to the people who will tip them with 
 a bright smile and some cheap advice; they are 
 " off-hand " and brusque to the passengers who will 
 hand them gold and ask no thanks. Stewards " see " 
 tips in unlikely places. They are ingenuous crea- 
 tures. There are no tipping schools, where servants 
 can acquire the knack of artistic expectation, and 
 where they, can learn to fathom the mysteries of the 
 unseen pocket-book. Stewards should be mind-read- 
 ers and purse-readers. They are neither. Some 
 philanthropist — some floating Carnegie — should 
 organise a school where stewards might learn how 
 to guide their faith in the right direction. In the 
 art of materialising tips, as in every other art, there 
 is a right and there is a wrong 
 direction. 
 
 Let me furnish a few instances 
 of the stewards' irrelevancy. 
 
 You see that elegantly gowned 
 lady who has just come on board 
 ~^\Hp*, at Southampton. She is very impor- 
 tant, very fussy, and fearfully dig- 
 nified. She carries a mysterious- 
 looking box, from which the savour 
 of priceless jewels appears to em- 
 anate. The bag may contain noth- 
 ing more than her curls and her 
 
Tipping 179 
 
 make-up. Jewels, however, seem probable. She is 
 careful to announce that she is travelling without 
 a maid. Her maid was taken ill in London at the 
 last moment. Maids are so thoughtless! They al- 
 ways "get things" at inopportune times. She is 
 deeply chagrined. What can she do without a maid? 
 This will be the first time that she has ever budged 
 without one. Tears well up in her eyes. 
 
 The stewardess swallows the bait unhesitatingly. 
 She rises to the occasion. She is all sympathy and 
 all solicitude. She comforts the poor maid-less trav- 
 eller. Madame will permit her to do all she can — 
 and it is much — to contribute to her creature-com- 
 fort. She will brush Madame's hair, and massage 
 Madame's face, and tuck Madame up in her bed. 
 Madame thanks her in a forlorn way. She will en- 
 deavour to make shift with the stewardess' services. 
 
 And she endeavours, most successfully. She ac- 
 cepts them, and she monopolises them. The ex- 
 pectant and delighted stewardess waits on her hand 
 and foot, neglecting many whom, by comparison, she 
 regards as " small fry." Madame gets attention in 
 gusts, and seems to regard it as her due. The stew- 
 ardess, feeling that she has a " soft snap," thinks that 
 she can afford to be haughty and apathetic with her 
 other charges. And she is haughty and apathetic. 
 Madame is her hope, her joy, and — things much 
 more nutritious. 
 
 The lady goes ashore in due course. She thanks 
 
i8o 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 the stewardess very prettily for her many atten- 
 tions. She hopes to " cross " with her again, and 
 intends to make a point of asking for her. In fact, 
 she will mention her name to one of the members 
 of the company who is a particular friend. She 
 
 hands her a coin — of about 
 one-eighth the value that the 
 obsequious hireling had 
 fondly anticipated, and flits 
 away. Oh, one thing more. 
 She has left one or two 
 things in her stateroom 
 that the stewardess may 
 P? £ K keep. These things are per- 
 haps a rag of a kimono, a tattered skirt, and a dis- 
 mantled corset. 
 
 The stewardess is broken-hearted. Another dream 
 vanished ! The neglected patrons, indignant at their 
 treatment, forget her. Her trip has been fruitless. 
 This is an incident that never varies. It is also one 
 of the few cases in which experience fails to teach. 
 On one occasion I sat at table with a lady and 
 her four boys — four fat, hungry, lusty youths of 
 immature age. I knew her brand very well, but not 
 so the steward. He reasoned in this way: Here 
 is a woman travelling un-husbanded, with four trou- 
 blesome sons. She will be intensely grateful for any 
 extra attention. It will help her out of many diffi- 
 culties. She is the tip of the voyage. 
 
Tipping 181 
 
 The poor chap immediately took possession of 
 that transatlantic mother, and I watched his tactics 
 with keen amusement. The four boys had the appe- 
 tites of at least eight. They ordered three or four 
 dishes at a time. They kept that steward running 
 to and fro. The rest of us counted for little. We 
 were just pimples. When he had a moment to spare 
 he deigned to take our 
 order, though he seemed 
 vexed that we should 
 have the temerity to 
 want anything. It never 
 occurred to him that we 
 might need nourishment. <==* ^J^^^^k 
 The m o t h e r-and-four j IBr 
 
 were the hopes upon &J W^ 
 
 which he built a stout edifice of tip. They ate like 
 barbarians. They took bacon with marmalade, and 
 tomatoes with sugar, and pie with meat. Anybody 
 but a steward would have known immediately that 
 such savages would not understand the gentle art 
 of tipping. Tipping is, after all, a growth of civil- 
 isation — perhaps a wart thereon. Primitive people 
 will never tip. 
 
 And it happened as I knew it would happen. At 
 that fateful last meal, when the tipper comes to the 
 surface, and the tippee watches him with perfervid 
 eyes, the matron-and-four saw us all in the tip-throe. 
 As she left the table, she took from her pocket a 
 
l82 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 few pieces of silver, and with a sweet and winsome 
 smile, she said to the eager one : " This is all I 
 have left of English money. I cannot use it, but I 
 am sure you can." It was about eighty cents! 
 The expression on that steward's face absolutely 
 
 defied description. It 
 mingled scorn with 
 bitter disappoint- 
 ment, rage, disgust, 
 sorrow, anxiety, and 
 * — best of all — re- 
 morse. The remorse 
 was what interested 
 me, for we were 
 avenged. 
 
 The steward on 
 an ocean steamer 
 judges by appear- 
 ances. The flashy passenger, with the loud voice 
 and the diamond headlight, who invariably dons 
 evening dress (and sometimes accompanies it with 
 tan shoes) looks good to him — much better than the 
 silent, unobtrusive little chap who seems half afraid 
 of giving trouble, and is always polite. It is the 
 former who always secures the steward's most lavish 
 endeavours ; it is the latter who is persistently slighted. 
 And the tip emanates from the latter; rarely from 
 the former. The former is a brow-beater, and not 
 inclined to pay for what he considers his due. He 
 
Tipping 
 
 183 
 
 throws a coin at his servitor 
 before leaving the ship, and 
 it is usually less than the 
 amount prescribed by alleged \ 
 tipping authorities. 
 
 People from the wild and 
 woolly west are exceedingly 
 droll. It is as good as a 
 farce to study them. They 
 frequently ask for information on the malignant 
 subject of tips. They have heard people on board 
 talking about it. Is it the correct thing to give 
 the stewards anything? If so, why is there no fixed 
 tariff? And how is it that the steamship companies 
 do not include service in their expensive fares? And 
 is it not an outrage to pay other people's servants? 
 And so on. How much must they give it? Why 
 not hand it to the purser, and let him make the dis- 
 tribution? 
 
 Contrary to what many people think, it 
 is not overtipping that has ruined the quality 
 of stewardship; it is undertipping. That the 
 quality has been ruined is beyond question. Kind 
 old ladies from "prohibition" states, who tip with 
 a temperance tract and a blessing; free and 
 enlightened cranks, who decline to degrade the 
 working-classes by meaningless gratuities; the 
 extraordinary people who democratically re- 
 gard the stewards as "equal," call them 
 
184 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 by their Christian names, 
 and tell them their family 
 histories ; arrogant upstarts, 
 who refuse to be made a 
 party to " blood-sucking," 
 the hopelessly ignorant, who 
 know no better — these are 
 the people who give the poor 
 steward his pangs — pangs 
 for which willing tippers are 
 forced to pay. 
 
 So it happens that very 
 often the suffering steward 
 cares for nobody, no, not he, 'cos nobody cares for 
 him! He is surly indifference until the last day, 
 when be becomes sinister attention. For, after all, 
 thinks he, it is the last day — and not the first step — ■ 
 that counts! He leaves you severely alone during 
 six full and beautiful days, and on the seventh — 
 he brings tea to your room, brushes your clothes for 
 you, smooths out your wrinkles, and tells you that 
 it is going to be lovely weather. He has never both- 
 ered about the weather before, even though it may 
 have played all sorts of pranks with your peace of 
 mind. In fact, this is apparently the first time he 
 has ever noticed weather. You do not feel as grate- 
 ful to him as you would have done if he had buoyed 
 you up with affectionate remarks about the weather 
 on — say, the second day out. 
 
Tipping 
 
 185 
 
 Poor old chap ! I am always sorry for the stew- 
 ard. He has a dog's life. He is usually a very 
 decent, hard-working, kindly-hearted fellow, but he 
 expects his tip, which should be made compulsory, 
 is so easily gulled by blatant behaviour. His life 
 is a series of disillusions. He is never a student of 
 human nature. That which glitters is to him in- 
 variably gold. 
 
 But I cannot love the "last day" steward, 
 however much I may try. I cannot feel a deep- 
 rooted affection for the menial who says most 
 emphatically "Good-morning" to me on the sev- 
 enth day, and who, on the preceding days, has taken 
 pains not to see me as I passed by. He is actuated 
 by human motives — I know that — but there are 
 some human motives that are less desirable than 
 others. 
 
 Sometimes I feel impelled to help the poor stew- 
 ard. I see him tucking up some fair dame in her 
 steamer-chair, ply- 
 ing her with sweet 
 attentions, arrang- 
 ing her cushions, 
 and bombarding her 
 with zealous 
 thought, when I 
 know too well that 
 she will never " ma- 
 terialise." I t i s 
 
[86 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 written all over her face, in handwriting that is 
 unmistakable to me. But she wears diamonds, and 
 expensive furs, and is "made-up" for the morning 
 deck, and the will o' the wisp lures him to his de- 
 struction. Far — far better, if he were to devote 
 himself to that poor little nobody, sitting alone at 
 the other end of the deck, and apparently pining 
 for a whiff of attention. But she wears no jewels; 
 her hair is rammed into a cheap "tarn o' shanter," 
 and she exudes no flavour of prosperity. I long 
 to tell him that she will "tip" — that her tip will 
 be the outward manifestation of gratitude. It is 
 gratitude that is the surest tip-extracter. 
 
 Seriously, the last day on board — the tipping day 
 — is a trying occasion. You feel oppressed by a 
 
 large variety of conflicting 
 emotions. Somehow or 
 .other, your sense of hu- 
 Imour dries up, and you 
 find yourself humour-less, 
 unable to see fun in any- 
 thing. You are confronted 
 by the difficult problem of 
 doing the right thing in the 
 right way. You want to go 
 ashore with the memory of 
 smiling faces wishing you 
 ^J^j ^ )? g° od hick. And what is 
 
 ""*"** """ the price of a smiling 
 
Tipping 
 
 187 
 
 face? Is there any reduction if you buy smiling 
 faces wholesale? 
 
 There is no standard for the tip. It is left hope- 
 lessly to your — er — indiscretion. The man who over- 
 tips is a fool; the man who under-tips is a knave. 
 You are not anxious to be either. Some people 
 would rather be a knave than a fool. I cannot see 
 that one is comelier than the other. Strange menials 
 appear, and smile at you — menials you have scarcely 
 
 8M,1*. 
 
 seen. They come from the bowels of the ship ; many 
 of them appear to have dropped from the sky. The 
 boy who blows the bugle for dinner suddenly seems 
 to have conceived a violent fancy for you. A sooty- 
 faced individual introduces himself to you as " the 
 boots " ; a suave sailor announces that it was he who 
 
1 88 The Great Wet Way 
 
 chalked the deck for shuffleboard. A lad who ran 
 errands for the officers looks at you hopefully. Oh, 
 you do want them to remember you pleasantly ! But 
 unless you happen to be a millionaire, or an anti- 
 tipper on principle, you grow befuddled. You see 
 the distant shore, and you wish you were there. 
 There is nobody to help you; nobody to give you a 
 hint. Each passenger tips, or doesn't tip, according 
 to his conception of the role. It is a dreadful mo- 
 ment for the ultra-sensitive. It is even a cruel mo- 
 ment. As for that bugbear, the right thing — what 
 is right for you is wrong for your neighbour, and 
 what is wrong for you is right for your neighbour. 
 It is bewildering. It is an inextricable labyrinth. 
 
 It is as bad as the predicament in which the Lon- 
 don cabby places you. With the London cabby you 
 are as much at sea as you are on any ship. To 
 underpay him is to be cursed; to give him his 
 exact fare is to be near-cursed; to over-pay him is to 
 get a " Thank you " and a smile. You hate to 
 adopt similar tactics on board ship, but the cabby's 
 tip is a very near relative to the steward's gratuity. 
 Nor can you settle either by any fixed rules, as I 
 tried to do with a cabby on one occasion — and only 
 one! 
 
 It was the result of various sickening experiences 
 with London cabby. I had been " done brown " so 
 many times that my friends had laughed at my 
 weakness most provokingly. Therefore, I made up 
 
Tipping 189 
 
 my mind firmly to be strong and non-vacillating. A 
 Londoner laid me down what he called an unvarying 
 rule. "Take out your watch, old chap," he said, 
 " and while you are in the hansom, hold it in your 
 hand. Look at it carefully, and note the number of 
 minutes the trip takes. Then, reckon at the rate 
 of a penny per minute. If it be under twelve min- 
 utes, you cannot of course give the cabby less than 
 a shilling, plus his tip. Anything over twelve min- 
 utes, pay at the rate of a penny a minute, and give 
 him fourpence for himself. He'll thank you. He'll 
 take off his hat to you." 
 
 How grateful I was for this ! I had lovely visions 
 of a botde-nosed cab-driver doffing his hat and mak- 
 ing affable remarks about the weather. These 
 visions were delicious to me. The realities had been 
 so sad, and so costly. 
 
 That afternoon I visited a theatre outside the 
 London radius, and took a hansom — this time, with- 
 out any misgivings, for I felt that I at last owned 
 the key to the situation. Usually I am full of 
 gloomy forebodings in a hansom cab; this time I 
 was light-hearted and joyous. Out came my watch, 
 and it was my pleasure to note the minutes as they 
 flitted by. It is wonderful what a quantity of ground 
 can be covered in one minute by a fleet hansom cab. 
 We reached the outlying theatre in exactly eleven 
 minutes by my veracious time-piece. Eleven min- 
 utes 1 That would mean, according to my friend's 
 
190 The Great Wet Way 
 
 regulations, that if I gave the cabby one-and-four- 
 pence — a shilling for his fare and fourpence for 
 his tip — he would thank me, and then take off his 
 hat. 
 
 The old habit of handing cabby a tentative sum, 
 and then shutting my eyes and hoping for the best, 
 was about to assert itself. I straightened myself up, 
 however, rushed into the breach, and handed my 
 pilot one-and-fourpence, with a bright yet dignified 
 smile. Then I waited to see him doff his hat, and 
 murmur " Thank you." 
 
 The cabby, at first, seemed paralysed. Then he 
 grew apoplectic. His eyes appeared to bulge from 
 his head. He jumped from his perch, and let loose 
 a torrent of alleged language that would dry up any 
 ink. I was surprised, of course, but firm. Let him 
 enjoy himself. I had done the correct thing, and I 
 fully proposed to stand by it. Naturally I felt a 
 bit disappointed, for I did want to see him doff his 
 cap, and he looked as though he were going to 
 doff minel No matter. I walked gracefully away, 
 and entered the lobby of the theatre, which was filled 
 with a matinee crowd of men and women. 
 
 By my side was — cabby ! He was asking in stento- 
 rian tones if I thought I was a gentleman, and what I 
 meant by refusing to pay my fare. He would call 
 the police — he would call every policeman in Lon- 
 don — before he would be swindled. The theatre- 
 lobby seemed to echo his words. The crowd of ex- 
 
Tipping 191 
 
 pectant theatre-goers grew interested — intensely in- 
 terested it seemed to me. They stopped in their 
 purchase of theatre-tickets, for here was a free show. 
 They formed a ring around us. I grew paler; the 
 cabby grew redder. It was a ghastly predicament. 
 Even if I had right on my side — and I began to 
 doubt it — what was the use of it? My resolutions 
 crumbled; my firm determination evaporated. I 
 caved in! I asked him in wavering, cringing tones 
 how much he wanted, and was prepared to yield up 
 my little all. He wanted exactly three times the 
 amount I had given him, and he got it. That, he 
 said, was the precise fare without a tip. 
 
 I was really quite grateful to him for accepting 
 it. I might just as well have spared myself this 
 scene, and have done what everybody else does. But 
 somehow or other one hates to be green-horned. One 
 prefers to be liberal in one's own way instead of 
 being clubbed into a cabby's idea of liberality. This 
 was an odious experience. I firmly believe that the 
 cabby would have bought a seat for the play, and 
 have sat through the piece, muttering sotto-voce 
 imprecations in my ear, if I had declined to suc- 
 cumb. He went away, well-pleased and smiling. 
 That also riled me. I felt that he had paid him- 
 self for his " anxiety of mood." 
 
 Well, the taxi-cab has reduced all these griev- 
 ances to a minimum. Thank a progressive age, 
 and a peace-loving age, for the taxi-cab. 
 
192 The Great Wet Way 
 
 On board ship, however, there are as yet no taxi- 
 stewards. There probably will be. I should like to 
 see some sort of arrangement by which the steward 
 is equipped with a disc on his shirt-front that regis- 
 ters the exact amount of attention he gives to each 
 of his patrons. Why not? This would furnish you 
 some faint inkling of the correct thing to do, and to 
 show extra appreciation you could multiply it or 
 add to it. At any rate, it would supply a standard. 
 The taxi-steward would be one of the greatest of all 
 modern improvements on board ship. A fig for the 
 stateroom telephone! A fig for the electric hair- 
 curler! A box of figs for the whole set of labour- 
 saving appliances! What we need is the taxi- 
 steward, registering his indebtedness, and making 
 that fateful last day less terrifying and anxious. 
 
 Some people who would like to be anti-tippers, 
 but lack the necessary grit, and whose gratuities are 
 imperceptible to the naked eye, say reassuringly: 
 "What does it matter? We shall never see them 
 again." What a mistake! These half-tipped men- 
 ials will haunt their lives. They will occur at the 
 most inopportune moments. They will be on some 
 other ship. They will be found in hotels. They 
 will be recognised as butlers in friends' houses. They 
 will sneer and jibe. They will spread slanderous re- 
 ports. They will upset one's dignity, one's poise. 
 They will nourish a fearful revenge. There will be 
 no escape from them. 
 
Tipping 193 
 
 " We shall never see them again." Oh yes, you 
 will, and they will see you first. They will cast a 
 shadow on your happiness. They will loom up as 
 your past ! Like the hero in the play, you will sprout 
 a past, and it will hurl itself at you when you least 
 expect it. Go easily, ye optimists, who murmur: 
 " We shall never see them again." Never is a long 
 time. 
 
 To some, tipping seems easy, and even luxurious. 
 It is neither. It is graft on a small scale, but the 
 problem of graft is a very complicated one, because 
 it is so tacit. All regulated expenditure is simple. 
 It is the unregulated expenditure that abounds in 
 difficulties. The steamship companies sometimes 
 print announcements to the effect that servants are 
 not permitted to ask for gratuities. They think 
 that kind. I call it malevolent. I should like my 
 stewards to come to me like honest grafters, before 
 the boat sailed, and make a deal. I should like to 
 know exactly what they consider the square dishonest 
 thing, so that I might do that square dishonest thing 
 — honestly. It is unjust being kept in suspense. 
 There is always a sword of Damocles hanging over 
 the heads of transatlantic passengers, to descend 
 on the day of landing. I have seen stout men quail, 
 and stouter women quiver like jellies. 
 
 There are some publications on the subject of the 
 ocean trip that attempt to give you advice on this 
 matter. You are told the amount that is " usually " 
 
194 The Great Wet Way 
 
 given to the bedroom steward, and the table-stew- 
 ard, and the others. This always reminds me of 
 my " penny-a-minute " experience with the London 
 cabby, though I am bound to admit that I have never 
 noticed any scenes on the dock resembling that 
 episode in the theatre-lobby. The ship's stewards are 
 never bottle-nosed, and sometimes they do not even 
 speak the English language. Their inability to use 
 English " cuss words " must save many passengers 
 from perilous moments of overwhelming interjection. 
 Gradually, after prolonged experience, one gets 
 used to tipping, as eels get used to being skinned. 
 One tips everybody who looks tippishly-inclined, 
 especially after having visited the hotels of Italy anil 
 Switzerland, where grave and portentous creatures, 
 wearing much gold braid and many gold buttons, 
 swallow tips voraciously. When I left my hotel in 
 Rome, I tipped a man who had never done any 
 earthly thing for any of us. He generally stood on 
 the stairs, in our way, as we descended. When he 
 saw us he got out of our way and smiled. I sup- 
 pose I tipped him for getting out of the way. He 
 might have refused to move, and then we should 
 have had to jump over him. In some hotels the 
 menials stand in a sort of kiss-in-the-ring circle 
 around you, and you give to each a " little some- 
 thing," for you do not wish to miss your train. I 
 often wonder why we do not tip the hotel proprietor, 
 the architect who designed the hotel, and the labour- 
 
Tipping 195 
 
 ers who erected it. If they stood around on the last 
 day, I dare say we should tip them. I should. No 
 more scruples will ever be recorded against my ac- 
 count. Mine not to reason why. 
 
 To the constant traveller, therefore, the trans- 
 atlantic tip is not quite as vexatious as it is to the 
 non-traveller. He has become partly inured to the 
 process, even though it will spring incessant sur- 
 prises upon him. He may think that he knows it in 
 all its possible variations, but there will be some new 
 variation to delight his soul. The non-traveller is 
 amazed and discomfited. It is he who writes to the 
 papers, possessed of a delicious grievance, and per- 
 haps in some sympathetic editorial he finds balm. 
 That balm will be healing — until he sets forth on 
 his travels again. Then he will immediately dis- 
 cover that it was a temporary, and not a permanent, 
 cure. 
 
 Women are the worst tippers. The process hurts 
 them — not that they are lacking in generosity, but 
 simply because they reason about it. Have you ever 
 studied a group of shopping women at a bargain- 
 counter in Manhattan's big stores? Have you ever 
 watched them haggling over a cent, estimating 
 values, and lost in opaque reflection? Well, just 
 think of these women confronted with the awful 
 problem of tipping, which in many cases is tanta- 
 mount to giving something for nothing I The idea 
 is certainly droll. Yet these women are very fre- 
 
196 The Great Wet Way 
 
 quently ocean-travellers. Would you like to be their 
 expectant steward? 
 
 The man who hesitates about his tip is lost. There 
 is no scope for reasoning. There may be every ap- 
 parent reason for withholding the tip — neglect, 
 impoliteness, apathy. Tip just the same, and just 
 as much — for your own sake, for your own peace 
 of mind, for your own self-respect. Tell nobody. 
 Do not brag about your generosity. If you do, you 
 will meet somebody who alleges that he has doubled 
 you — and you cannot re-double. You will, therefore, 
 feel small and squirmy. Do not believe what your 
 neighbour tells you as to the size of his tip. He may 
 be truthful, but in this matter I consider that it is 
 perfectly pardonable to lie. It is even justifiable. 
 Truth is one of my strongest weaknesses, but if a 
 man be fool enough to tell me what he gave his 
 steward-of-the-table, I am not going to be outdone 
 when one pleasing little lie will see me through. 
 Never. I may evade the issue. If, for example, he 
 says, " I gave my bedroom steward twenty-five dol- 
 lars," when I have merely tipped mine five dollars, I 
 may remark, " Well, I think that is just about right. 
 You couldn't reasonably have given him less." I say 
 this quite tranquilly, because I know that he has not 
 given him twenty-five dollars. If he had, he would 
 have told me fifty dollars. Confide in nobody. That 
 is the safest policy. Everybody is uneasy on the 
 subject, which is such a vague one, and so muddled. 
 
Tipping 197 
 
 It is best wrapped in the mantle of silence. Disturb 
 not the cloak of Monna Vanna 1 
 
 When you have tipped, look neither to the right 
 nor to the left. Run away, and let the breezes on 
 deck fan your fevered brow. You may have done 
 right; you may have done wrong; but you have 
 played the part of tipper as you conceived the role. 
 Your " reading " may differ from that of your 
 neighbour. But it is your reading, and perhaps you 
 have been very original — quite terribly and disas- 
 trously original 1 
 
X 
 
 NERVOUS PASSENGERS 
 
 EAR of the sea is 
 an inheritance. It 
 comes to us from a 
 long array of land- 
 lubber ancestors — 
 annoying predeces- 
 sors who insist on 
 bequeath ing us 
 some of their un- 
 cunning little ways, 
 and take care that 
 we never start in 
 life with a clean 
 slate. They always 
 leave us something — that we don't want. We fear 
 the sea to-day for no other conceivable reason than 
 that these silly old ancestors feared it. I'd like to 
 meet some of my very remote ancestors, face to face, 
 for a quarter of an hour, just to tell them what I 
 think of them. Inheritances that one cannot cash 
 are such dreadful things that one can scarcely blame 
 Ibsen for waxing morbid on the theme. 
 
 However accustomed you may become to ocean 
 travel, you never quite forget the foolish and illogi- 
 
 198 
 
Nervous Passengers 199 
 
 cal idea that the sea is a risky thing. The notion 
 of the " perils of the ocean " is imbedded in our 
 substance. And very funny that notion seems to- 
 day. The alleged " perils of the ocean " loom up 
 as broadly farcical. The pampered autocrat who 
 sleeps under silken covers in a " deck suite " ; who 
 nourishes himself with all the expensive delicacies of 
 a luxurious age; upon whom noiseless menials dance 
 an obsequious attendance, and whose avoirdupois in- 
 creases visibly during the trip from Sandy Hook to 
 the Lizard, still feels in his inner self that he is bat- 
 ding with the " perils of the ocean." What he 
 would feel if he were lashed to a mast and fed on 
 hard tack, it is impossible to imagine. Perhaps he 
 would look upon that fate as the " humour of the 
 ocean." 
 
 The sense of insecurity in the midst of what, com- 
 pared with the perils of land, is really double-bar- 
 relled security, may not be analysed. It is our en- 
 dowment. Let us not look a gift horse in the mouth. 
 Some of us temporarily forget our inheritance, and 
 firmly believe that we have no sense of any risk, as 
 we step blithely across the gang-plank to our float- 
 ing hotel, but the idea is there just the same. It is 
 latent, and it is always ready to pop out and dis- 
 arm us. 
 
 If it were not for those irrepressible old ances- 
 tors, we should give the ocean steamer the credit 
 that it deserves, and acknowledge that for one week, 
 
200 The Great Wet Way 
 
 at any rate, it sheltered us from the abnormal and 
 soul-racking perils of land — from roaring trips in 
 subterranean tunnels, from rickety ascensions m 
 apathetic elevators, from the exhilarating uncer- 
 tainty of the raging motor, and from the insidious 
 attack of the bogey-thing we call by the pet name 
 of microbe, or germ, or bacillus. We should feel 
 that the isolated liner, moving spendidly across the 
 face of the waters, removed us from civilisation's 
 perils. We do not feel this — just because of ances- 
 tors that were forced upon us, and for whom we 
 have no use whatever. It seems too bad, doesn't it? 
 And to think that the only time one ever sees one's* 
 ancestors is at night, after a Welsh rarebit, or a 
 lobster a la Newburg, when it is quite impossible to 
 give them a piece of one's mind ! 
 
 Relics of the barbarous notion of sea-peril con- 
 front us relentlessly, even before the steamer sails. 
 The dock is crowded with wailing ones, there to say 
 a last good-bye, with a display of grief so pic- 
 turesque that it might have been designed to deco- 
 rate an expedition to the North Pole. The loved 
 ones are about to embark. Night will set in, and 
 they will be miles and miles away, struggling with 
 the dark fury of the Atlantic. Tears are shed by 
 the sad people who are left to mourn. 
 
 The passengers who are just aching to get away 
 grow a trifle timid of course. The lamentations of 
 the mourners coax forth the old idea of the perils of 
 
Nervous Passengers 
 
 201 
 
 the ocean. Farewell gifts are lavished upon them 
 with lugubrious generosity. These gifts do not vary 
 much. There are unbudging fashions in this style 
 of mourning. One notes the cushion on which " Bon 
 Voyage " has been embroidered by some dear, fond 
 hand. The happy traveller bursts into tears as this 
 wonderful thought is handed to her. Occasionally 
 it has " Good Luck " on it, but the French inscrip- 
 tion is much more popular. Gorgeous floral pieces 
 are sent to the ship — very much like those that are 
 sent to funerals. Unconsciously one looks among 
 the flowers in the saloon for " The Gates Ajar." 
 People spend fortunes on flowers for departing 
 
202 The Great Wet Way 
 
 sailors, though the exact reason why a lovely gar- 
 den's blossoms should always typify the end, I have 
 not discovered. The ship's saloon is all aglow with 
 the splendid tints of the flowers. Cards are attached 
 to each piece, just the same as at a funeral. The 
 difference is the omission of condolences. 
 
 Gifts of fruit and candy seem a trifle more cheer- 
 ful. They imply that the dear departing one may 
 perchance be able to eat them, which is a more opti- 
 mistic idea. Most sailing day presents, however, are 
 the result of impenetrable pessimism, symbolic of the 
 aged notion that the ocean is a mighty, cruel 
 monster. 
 
 The departure is intensely pathetic. A bell rings. 
 A stentorian voice calls out, " All visitors for the 
 shore ! " It is the last moment, which is sad on 
 principle. Friends prepare to leave the miserable 
 passengers to their fate. They have done all they 
 could for the poor things. They have inspected the 
 staterooms, full of compassion for the unfortunates 
 doomed to spend a week in such stuffy quarters. You 
 listen to strange comments. 
 
 " To think of you in this little cubby hole all by 
 yourself for a week," says a fond mother to her 
 helpless boy. "Oh, why did I let you go?" And 
 she bursts into tears. 
 
 " Is this where you sleep ? " asks a doting wife of 
 her curiously unmoved husband. " Oh, you poor, 
 poor thing I " And she sobs on his shoulder. 
 
Nervous Passengers 
 
 203 
 
 Q/H 
 
 " Dear little creatures ! May Heaven protect 
 you, and bring you safely through all peril," mur- 
 murs grandmamma, as she views the children's 
 stateroom. " How dreadful it all is ! " And the 
 poor soul creeps away, the tears coursing down her 
 furrowed cheeks. 
 
 The bell has rung, however, and the inevitable 
 must be faced. Some fond relatives cannot bear to 
 leave the ship so callously. It is all so cruel. They 
 see the Captain, who is terribly busy, and a trifle 
 fractious. They pounce on him, and ask him if the 
 weather is going to be fine, and if he has any idea 
 what time the ship will arrive on the other side. 
 The Captain loves to be asked such questions, but 
 he carefully conceals all evidence of such love. He 
 answers very brusquely that he " really couldn't 
 say," although he may be dying to tell them that it 
 will be calm all the way over, and that the boat will 
 arrive at sixteen minutes past two on the afternoon 
 of Thursday week. 
 
204 The Great Wet Way 
 
 Then the mourners troop down the gang-plank, 
 turning occasionally to glance at the loved ones on 
 the ship, who look " so natural." It is most melan- 
 choly. Even if you happen to be running away from 
 your creditors, you feel sad and forlorn. This 
 trip may have been the dream of your life, but the 
 farewells are so touching that you are hopelessly 
 depressed. You are going to the " old " world, but 
 you might be starting for the " next " world, so 
 final is the atmosphere. Friends all seem so anxious 
 to take a " last look " at you ! They troop to the 
 end of the dock to see your silent exit — almost as 
 though they wanted to make quite sure, and see with 
 their own eyes, that it was your exit — and no mis- 
 take about it. They wave tear-soaked handker- 
 chiefs. You can almost hear those dear ones mur- 
 muring, as the ship moves: "Well, he's gone! " or 
 "That's the last of her!" 
 
 The real truth is that these well-meaning but tra- 
 dition-riddled dear ones go sadly away to the perils of 
 land, while the sailors are moving slowly towards the 
 glorious security of the sea. The dear ones weep for 
 the departed who are at the mercy of a jolly Cap- 
 tain, as they confide themselves to the care of an un- 
 godly chauffeur. Seriously, tradition is a farce. If 
 passengers could cross the ocean in a passionate au- 
 tomobile, nobody would shed a tear; but just because 
 the trip is made in a dispassionate ocean steamer, 
 everybody weeps. 
 
Nervous Passengers 
 
 20$ 
 
 <?>^* 
 
 ^rj»JZ^ A> '- 
 
 So, as you move slowly 
 away, the idea of old 
 ocean's peril, dormant' 
 in your subconscious- 1 
 ness, has been lured to^ 
 life. Your heritage as- 
 serts its power, and you 
 remember that the sea 
 is wet and deep. The 
 first thing that strikes 
 your eye as you reach 
 your stateroom is the 
 curious decoration of its 
 ceiling. This is ornamented with life-belts! They 
 give you a shock. It seems ominous. Why are the 
 life-belts there? Why are there instructions out- 
 side teaching you how to adjust them ? It is a grue- 
 some sight — those life-belts with no passengers in 
 them. 
 
 Departing friends have made you feel nervous, 
 and you stand and look at that array of life-belts. 
 They conjure up nice old ideas of ocean's peril. For 
 one hectic moment, perhaps, you see yourself floating 
 on the heaving bosom of the Atlantic, garbed in a 
 life-belt, scanning the horizon for " a sail." It is 
 quite ghastly. Nervous passengers never fail to 
 regard the life-belts, and to read the instructions for 
 their adjustment. Possibly, some try them on, 
 though they do not boast about it. In fact, the life- 
 
206 The Great Wet Way 
 
 belts are never discussed. They are a sort of ta- 
 booed subject. You see your room-mate looking at 
 them fearfully, but you say nothing. You hope that 
 he will say nothing. There are some topics that it 
 is best to avoid. Just the same, you make up your 
 mind to adjust a belt, when you are quite alone, and 
 see how it works. When you have made that resolu- 
 tion you feel much better — almost as though the 
 life-belt had saved you. 
 
 Nervous passengers are not at all ashamed of 
 their condition. They glory in it. They seem to 
 consider it due to refinement, and to look upon non- 
 nervous passengers as rather brazen creatures, lost 
 to all sense of subtlety. They are always looking 
 for trouble, and appear to be quite vexed that their 
 quest is so futile. Sometimes they tell you that they 
 never sleep at night; that they decline to let them- 
 selves sleep, and that they are worn out with their 
 vigil. 
 
 The fog horn drives them distracted. I will ad- 
 mit that there is sweeter music than this Wagnerian 
 leit-motif of the mist; also that the automatic regu- 
 larity of the instrument is not conducive to slumber. 
 Nervous passengers hear it, and scent immediate 
 danger. They refuse to be comforted. They are 
 hopelessly " rattled." The fog horn that continues 
 all through the stilly night sounds like the " crack 
 of doom." Timid people find themselves waiting 
 for an answer. Sometimes they lie in their bunks, 
 
Nervous Passengers 207 
 
 expecting the grand bump ! People who have no 
 fear in the sleeping car of an express train, running 
 on rails, look confidently fcr collision at sea, just be- 
 cause a veil of fog has descended. They envy the 
 loved ones on shore, and wonder what impelled 
 them to brave the " perils." 
 
 Of course nobody could possibly feel any very 
 ecstatic affection for the fog horn. It is not a lova- 
 ble thing. Passengers who complain about a lack 
 of everything on board ship never complain about 
 a lack of fog horn. Sometimes its first blast wakes 
 them out of a sound sleep, and plunges them into an 
 agony of apprehension. One cannot help feeling 
 sorry for them, but it is often difficult to give them 
 as much sympathy as they exact. 
 
 If you have been cold-blooded and nerveless 
 enough to sleep through the fog horn's uncanny do- 
 ings, never' admit it. That is a piece of advice that 
 I must strongly emphasise. The very first thing 
 you will be asked in the morning is, " Wasn't the 
 fog horn dreadful? " 
 
 If, in a spirit of bravado — also in accordance with 
 the strict truth — you remark that you slept soundly, 
 and never heard the wild blasts, you will be regarded 
 as a brazen, conscienceless fibber, as well as a mean, 
 unsympathetic, and bragging outcast. Nobody will 
 believe you. Nervous passengers will consider that 
 you are laughing at them. You may even be accused 
 of having looked upon the wine when it was red. 
 
208 The Great Wet Way 
 
 Even in the smokeroom, where everybody laughs at 
 the fog horn in the day time, you will not be popu- 
 lar if you confess that you did not hear it at night. 
 You will seem to be taking a mean advantage 
 of your fellows. The man who can sleep when 
 everybody else is awake does not cut a happy 
 figure. 
 
 Tell the lady who informs you that she never 
 slept a wink all night; that she was dreadfully 
 frightened; that she had her jewel box all ready 
 for the life-boats; and that she never really expected 
 to be alive in the morning, that you are not surprised. 
 It was indeed terrifying. If the Captain wants to 
 make the hit of his life — and he generally does — 
 he will rejoice the timid passengers by informing 
 them that it was the very worst fog he ever saw 
 on the Atlantic; that it was almost impossible to 
 cope with it; that he had sat up all night in dumb 
 misery, and that — well, he had pulled the boat 
 through. Etcetera, etcetera. Some Captains are 
 very kind in that way. Nervous passengers love to 
 believe that their nervousness was legitimate. They 
 are happy to learn that a little "blow" was a 
 cyclone, or that no other ship could possibly have 
 behaved in a storm as admirably as this particular 
 ship. Some Captains also are not very kind in that 
 way, and nervous passengers are extremely dis- 
 pleased to hear that the fog was the " usual thing 
 on the Banks," and that the furious driving storm 
 
Nervous Passengers 209 
 
 was a delusion. They are sure that it was a cyclone, 
 and that the Captain is " keeping it from them." On 
 the chart, next day, they are quite indignant to note 
 that the sea, which they diaried as "mountains 
 high," is chronicled as " moderate." 
 
 Nervous passengers watch the Captain as a cat 
 watches a mouse. They take particular interest in 
 his meals. The Captain's food plays a very impor- 
 tant role with them. Sometimes they are horrified 
 to see him calmly taking his dinner in the saloon 
 while the ship is prancing around frantically. They 
 wonder if he is shrinking his duty and overlooking his 
 work on the " bridge " for the mere creature com- 
 forts of the table. They whisper; they are very 
 concerned; they watch every morsel that the poor 
 man puts into his mouth; they note, in perturbation, 
 the close attention that he pays to the various courses. 
 I have heard them gently hint at these sentiments. 
 
 "I suppose you are in a hurry to get to your 
 post on deck? " said a timid lady to the hungry Cap- 
 tain last year, as she watched him poring over" the 
 menu, while the ship was executing a pleasing pas 
 seul. 
 
 " Not all, Madame," replied the Captain, as he 
 gave a leisurely order to his own obsequious stew- 
 ard. " I'm very comfortable, thanks." 
 
 The lady looked meaningly at her companion on 
 the right. Her companion nudged her. She re- 
 tired to the fray. " It is a good thing to take one's 
 
210 
 
 The .Great Wet Way 
 
 /"***& 
 
 I8M 
 
 time at meals," she resumed, with a little nervous 
 laugh, " but I presume that you daren't stay very 
 long at table." 
 
 " I certainly dare," responded the Captain, in 
 gayest humour. " I have a very good appetite. 
 Hope you have. This nice weather makes me 
 hungry." 
 
 " Nice weather! " ejaculated the lady, holding on 
 to her soup-plate. "Well, I declare! You are jok- 
 ing, Captain. Is the — is the — er — ship in any dan- 
 ger?" 
 
 The Captain bit his lip. He called the steward, 
 analysed the menu very deliberately, questioned the 
 steward as to the possible merit of certain dishes, 
 and made his selection. Then he turned to the lady : 
 " I hope not, Madame," he said, with a catch in his 
 voice. 
 
Nervous Passengers 211 
 
 She could stand it no longer. This was the last 
 straw. " If you think you ought to go on deck, 
 Captain," she suggested delicately, " we will excuse 
 you. Of course, we like to have you with us. Still 
 — I feel very nervous, and so does Mrs. Smith. 
 Don't you, dear?" — to the neighbour. 
 
 " Quite," asserted dear. " We like you very 
 much, Captain " — with a titter — " but we'll let you 
 go, if you think it necessary." 
 
 Did he? That Captain seemed to be suddenly 
 gnawed by hunger that was extraordinary. He went 
 all through the bill of fare at a steady canter. He 
 was good-natured and happy, as most Captains are. 
 He did not request the nervous ladies to confine them- 
 selves exclusively to their own business. He just 
 sat there and enjoyed himself until, in desperation, 
 the timid ones rose and left the table. 
 
 " They think I'm making them nervous," he said 
 to me when they had gone, and he had laughed 
 heartily. " If I had appeared to heed them, and 
 had gone upstairs, they would have been much more 
 nervous. They would have retired to their state- 
 rooms, to collect their jewels, say their prayers, and 
 hope for the — er — worst. Oh, I know 'em„ I let 
 'em alone." 
 
 The absence of the Captain from the saloon is 
 noted with much apprehension by timid people, who 
 are also scared at his presence. He can do no right. 
 They are alarmed if they see him eating; they are 
 
212 The Great Wet Way 
 
 frightened if they do not see him eating. In the 
 former case, they affect to believe that he is negli- 
 gent; in the latter, that he is responding to urgent 
 calls. Why does he not try to pacify them by tell- 
 ing them that all is well ? Because, as the particular 
 Captain I have quoted above, remarked, he knows 
 'em. He is quite aware of the fact that it is their 
 inheritance of sea fear which is responsible for their 
 mood. No words of his could overcome it. It must 
 run its course like measles or whooping cough, mala- 
 dies that are better out than in. He is perfectly 
 serene; he knows that nervous passengers are inevi- 
 table. They do not amuse him, but they do not annoy 
 him. Nor do they interfere in the least with his 
 healthy and prodigious appetite. The time to be 
 really fearful would occur when the Captain sat at 
 table unable to eat. Then one might feel that 
 things had indeed " come to a pretty pass." But the 
 un-hungry Captain never happens. His digestion is 
 always excellent; he is, moreover, a connoisseur. If 
 you listen to the advice of the Captain at table, you 
 will learn not how to dominate a ship, but how to 
 steer your digestive apparatus along the road that 
 leads to peace. The Captain loves the good things 
 of life. 
 
 Stewards cater to nervous passengers in the way 
 they think best for the evolution of tips. Some- 
 times it is advisable to reassure the timid ones by 
 absolutely certifying the ship's sterling powers of 
 
Nervous Passengers 213 
 
 endurance. The steward will declare unblushingly 
 that there is no other ship on the ocean as steady 
 as this. There is no other vessel that rides the 
 waves as she does. Why, she was built for wave- 
 riding. 
 
 "Take some of them five-day boats," he will say 
 contemptuously, " they would be standing on their 
 'eads in this weather. And the vibration! It is 
 something terrible. This ship takes its time, to be 
 sure, but it's as gentle as a lamb. This would be 
 bad weather for a good many boats, but we can 
 stand it. We are built for it. The racers are not 
 constructed for the comfort of passengers. No, 
 ma'am. If I had my way, I'd never cross on any 
 other boat but this." 
 
 This same steward may see a tip in another direc- 
 tion from the other brand of nervous passenger. 
 He will tell a somewhat different story in his artless 
 way. 
 
 " I don't blame you for feeling nervous," he will 
 say. "It is terrific weather. The first officer was 
 just telling me that this is the worst gale he has ever 
 experienced. Everybody is ill. Wiry, the steward- 
 esses themselves can scarcely do their work. It is 
 dreadful; it really is. There's no danger — not a 
 bit. You can be sure of that, but it is a bad trip. 
 You will be able to tell your friends that you had 
 the roughest crossing in years." 
 
 The steward who understands the idiosyncrasies 
 
214 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 of the nervous passen- 
 ger usually comes out 
 very well when the tips 
 are distributed. He never 
 laughs at the timid ones; 
 that would nip his hopes 
 in the bud. He brings 
 a certain artistic sympa- 
 thy into play, and uses it 
 for all it is worth. The 
 nervous passenger feels 
 - Hb * confidence in him; rings 
 for him perpetually just to listen to his consoling 
 words, and the steward never loses his temper. 
 
 Sometimes you may hear the stewards and stew- 
 ardesses discussing the various cranks confided to 
 them, and enjoying many hearty laughs. It is just 
 as well that the cranks themselves never hear 
 this. 
 
 The ship's servants seem to prefer bad weather. It 
 brings out all their human traits. Love's labour is 
 lost when the sun shines. When it refuses to shine, 
 and the Atlantic is peevish, love's labour looks long- 
 ingly at a happy goal — which is surely a very human 
 trait. 
 
 On the modern liner the object is to do away with 
 the idea of the sea as much as possible, and to imi- 
 tate the notion of a big hotel. The decks are care- 
 fully enclosed, so that not a breeze blows over them. 
 
Nervous Passengers 
 
 215 
 
 Sometimes they have glass windows, and you can 
 sit in your steamer chair and almost forget that you 
 are on board. There are corners that might almost 
 be called "cosy," where the 
 zephyrs never reach — gloomy 
 corners that the nervous ones 
 love. Everything in ocean 
 travel tends nowadays to the 
 elimination of the role for- 
 merly played by the ocean, 
 which was once the " star," 
 and is gradually being pushed 
 down to the position of a 
 " supe." Those that love the sea repine at this, but 
 the intention is to rout our inherited sea horror. 
 The band on board labours with that object in 
 view. Perhaps it routs the sea horror, but it con- 
 jures up another — a rag-time horror which is much 
 worse. 
 
 Nervous passengers look more cheerful when they 
 listen to the strains of " popular " music on deck 
 and in the dining saloon. Those who are not nerv- 
 ous almost wish that they were. The band is a 
 desperate remedy, and a cruel one. It suggests 
 Coney Island in a petulant mood, and timid people 
 cannot think of their fears as they listen to its solac- 
 ing land grind. It is so cheerful — so persecutingly 
 cheerful. The band starts its atrocious consolation 
 as the ship sails. At that time it means well, for 
 
216 The Great Wet Way 
 
 its purpose is to offset the conspicuous miseries of 
 the accentuated farewell. It resumes its work at 
 dinner; it plays for an hour on deck each morning. 
 (Please note that I do not say how it plays, or what 
 it plays.) And it is to be presumed that it inspires 
 confidence in the many — and other things in the 
 few. Possibly the band would play if the ship 
 were sinking. I have never questioned the " musi- 
 cians," but I am convinced that their orders are to 
 play until the very last passenger is submerged — and 
 I think that if I were the last passenger I should 
 hurry up and get submerged as quickly as possible. 
 The band would be an incentive. 
 
 The effect of music is of course unquestioned. The 
 effect is therapeutic. Perhaps it does lessen the 
 nervous fears of the many at the expense of the 
 mental serenity of the few. One doesn't seem to be 
 on board ship when the band plays. One seems to 
 be — well, never mind ; 'tis best not to be too explicit. 
 Music hath charms — when it is music. Timid ones, 
 listening to the ship's band that plays the very airs 
 one is running away from, think of the warm secur- 
 ity, or alleged security, of a theatre, and feel that they 
 are there. The sea horror is pounded out of them 
 temporarily. The music at dinner robs the Atlantic 
 of its " qualities " and substitutes those of Forty- 
 second Street. Even the English liners are begin- 
 ning to annex the hard-working band. Soon there 
 will be no escape from it except on a freight boat. 
 
Nervous Passengers 
 
 217 
 
 Possibly freight boats will take to bands for nervous 
 
 sailors. 
 
 The band makes you think that you are on a 
 
 picnic. It is a lovely thought, but it palls. A picnic 
 
 every day for seven days would 
 
 weary the most ardent picnic 
 
 lover. But nervous passengers 
 
 are satisfied. The flavour of the 
 
 ocean trip is defrauded of its 
 
 piquancy, and they fear that 
 
 piquancy. They ask for* the' 
 
 cosy joys of land, as they tra-. 
 
 verse the waste of waters. 
 
 Nervous passengers would like 
 
 to gaze from the deck of a 
 steamer upon sky-scrapers, and 
 dry-goods stores, and palatial mansions, in mid-At- 
 lantic. They are- fractious because this seems to be 
 impossible at present. Steamship companies will 
 probably cater to this pronounced need later on. The 
 ship might be surrounded by canvas on which realis- 
 tic pictures of land's finest features could be painted. 
 It may yet come to pass that we cross the ocean 
 without seeing as much as a cup full of sea water. 
 That would be so delightful, wouldn't it? The 
 nervous passenger is the victim of an idea only. . Facts 
 prove that he is safer on an ocean steamer than he 
 is on a fast-flying train, but he is obsessed by his in- 
 heritance, and facts are powerless to comfort him. Nor 
 
218 The Great Wet Way 
 
 is he at all anxious to be comforted. He feels that 
 he is jeopardising his life to some extent; he has 
 some inkling of heroism in the act, and he talks of 
 that lethargic week of rest and relaxation and 
 healthy deck life as though it were an ordeal through 
 which cruel fate had propelled him. The fast 
 steamer is his friend. One can cross in four days 
 now, he will tell you joyously; soon that time will 
 be reduced to three days. He wonders if there will 
 ever be a pneumatic tube through which we can be 
 shot with exquisite rapidity. The pneumatic tube 
 for him any day! 
 
 The nervous passenger is a curious creature, 
 amusing to begin with, but somewhat fatiguing as 
 a steady pastime. He is unmistakable. He is fussy 
 and irritable; he is "not himself," he will tell you. 
 He cannot help it, he is always that way on the 
 ocean. He may even be an experienced traveller; 
 the nervous traveller is not invariably the person 
 who is making his first trip across. That may sound, 
 strange, but it is true. Sometimes he impresses you 
 in spite of yourself, and drags from your subcon- 
 sciousness your own inheritance. 
 
 He has heard the stewards whispering; he has 
 seen the Captain looking extremely serious; he was 
 awake when the engines stopped suddenly in the 
 night; he noticed certain ominous creakings in his 
 stateroom; he has observed the sailors apparently 
 getting the life-boats ready, and he feels it his duty 
 
Nervous Passengers 219 
 
 just to put you on your guard. And you laugh 
 mirthlessly, and admit to yourself that you do feel 
 a bit uncomfortable. You ask him to tell you all 
 he knows, and to conceal nothing, which he is quite 
 willing to do. You pity the other passengers, uncon- 
 scious of anything unusual happening. If you, need 
 company you tell them, and induce them to join the 
 merry, nervous throng, which is easy. The sea hor- 
 ror is always there, waiting to be invited out. 
 
 The very best thing to do with the nervous pas- 
 senger is to find a mate for him, and leave them 
 together in happy unhappiness; to avoid them con- 
 scientiously, as though they had something catch- 
 ing, which they assuredly have. 
 
XI 
 
 THE CONCERT 
 
 EE that long and serried 
 array of mute and mo- 
 tionless figures, swathed 
 in mummy-clothes, and 
 looking like the effigies 
 of the Kings and 
 Queens on the tombs in 
 Westminster Abbey or 
 the dessicated ghosts in 
 the Egyptian room of 
 the British Museum? 
 IWell, they are passen- 
 gers who are not feel- 
 ing happy. But there 
 will be a great resurrec- 
 tion of these mummies towards the end of the trip. 
 They will arise, and they will cast off their mummy- 
 clothes. They Will sing, and they will recite, and 
 they will play the piano, and the banjo, the violin, 
 and other instruments of torture. They will take 
 part in the Atlantic Ocean's sublime relaxation — the 
 ship's concert. 
 
 It is quite possible to escape the ship's concert, 
 
 820 
 
The Concert 221 
 
 but it is not at all probable. Do not buoy yourselves 
 up with false hopes. Do not pin your faith to the 
 continuance of rough weather. Do not reason that 
 because most of the women look as though they can- 
 not sing — they will not sing. For they will. Those 
 who can sing the least will sing the most. The re- 
 cuperative forces of the ocean are far-reaching. The 
 ocean is also a potent discoverer of " talent." It 
 converts the most inoffensive and diffident of men, as 
 well as the most guileless and ingenuous of women, 
 into unabashed and virulent " entertainers." 
 
 There is always on board ship some hustler, upon 
 whose hands time hangs heavily, and who is willing 
 to " arrange " a concert. He secures the Captain's 
 permission. The Captain is a wise man in his gen- 
 eration. He will always permit a concert, but he will 
 not always attend it. He will discover on the event- 
 ful night that he is needed on the bridge, or that duty 
 compels him to work in his room. One admires the 
 Captain; one envies him, as well. 
 
 It is the hustler's pleasant duty to collect " talent." 
 He is a very officious person, and he loves the work. 
 He pretends that it is most distasteful to him, and 
 that he is actuated by purest motives of charity. My 
 opinion is that he has elected himself to this job, a 
 week before sailing, and that it is his great chance 
 for becoming temporarily " prominent." He invokes 
 charity as his excuse. The proceeds pf the concert 
 will go to the orphans of seamen. No people on 
 
222 The Great Wet Way 
 
 earth seem to have as many orphans as seamen. Liv- 
 erpool must be entirely populated by orphans. For 
 twenty years I have had Liverpool orphans foisted 
 upon me. Far be it from me to indulge in levity 
 at the expense of unfortunate children, but one 
 never hears of any decrease in the ranks of the 
 orphans. 
 
 Boatloads of people sing for them, dance for 
 them, recite for them, whistle for them, and read for 
 them. Still, they are there next time^ust as for- 
 lorn and miserable. You never hear that the 
 orphans are doing nicely, that they are able to sit 
 up and take nourishment, or are as well as can be 
 expected. You never hear anything at all. The 
 concert takes place. There could be no concert if 
 there were no orphans. Nobody would dare to offer 
 such an entertainment for mere pleasure ! It is like 
 the charity bazaar, in which you see more bazaar 
 than charity. 
 
 The hustler comes up to you as you are resting 
 in your steamer-chair and tells you that there is to 
 be a concert on board for the benefit of the Liver- 
 pool orphans. (Sometimes you hear of Staten 
 Island orphans.) Will you take part in the enter- 
 tainment? You murmur a few words of protest — 
 for this is so sudden — and regret that you possess 
 no available talent. Oh, yes, he says, surely you 
 sing ? You tell him that you have never sung a note 
 in your life. He is politely incredulous. In the 
 
The Concert 
 
 223 
 
 name of charity, he insinuates that your are telling a 
 whopper. 
 
 " I don't suppose for a moment that you are a 
 Caruso," he says rather nastily, " but I daresay that 
 you could sing an ordinary song for us — ' Let Me 
 Like a Soldier Fall,' or ' Drink To Me Only With 
 Thine Eyes.' Everybody sings those songs." 
 
 You get rather huffy, and tell your persecutor 
 that you do not know one note from another. He 
 seems to think that positive proof that you sing. He 
 looks at you somewhat pitifully, and begs you to 
 remember the noble men who have willingly lost 
 their lives for your comfort. It is for their orphans 
 that he asks you to sing. Then you say that it is 
 just because you are so grateful to these men that 
 you refuse to injure their helpless orphans by maim- 
 ing them with your voice. 
 
 "A little piano- 
 forte solo?" he 
 suggests, not to be 
 put down by clam- 
 our. 
 
 He is very indig- 
 nant when you fight 
 shy of this. Once 
 when you were a 
 laughing lad you 
 used to play "Lil- 
 la's Lady," "Hay- 
 
224 The Great Wet Way 
 
 dn's Hymn to the Emperor," and "The Swiss 
 Boy," but nobody induced you to continue. In fact, 
 you have mercifully forgotten even those chaste 
 melodies. 
 
 " It's too bad," he says testily. " If everybody is 
 as apathetic as you are, we shall have no concert. 
 The Captain particularly begged me to organise this 
 entertainment " (he had particularly begged the Cap- 
 tain to allow him to organise it) , " and I hate to 
 be worsted. Well, if you won't sing or play for 
 us, you can at least make an address — a good stir- 
 ring, eloquent address." 
 
 "What about?" you murmur, with sinking heart. 
 
 " Oh, the Liverpool orphans," he says. " Poor 
 little things I" 
 
 Now, the Liverpool orphans cannot be " little 
 things." I have known them for twenty years, and 
 even orphans grow in twenty years. They must 
 be big, and married, with orphans of their own, by 
 this time. I mention this. He says I am unfeeling, 
 flippant, heartless, and he is not angry, but grieved. 
 With some sort of compunction — I know not why 
 — I volunteer to go round with him, and see 
 if I can help him in any way with the others. 
 Let me describe a typical talent-hunt with the 
 hustler. 
 
 The ship has " got wind " of the contemplated 
 concert, and the figures on the steamer-chairs, that 
 look like the Kings and Queens on the tombs of 
 
The Concert 225 
 
 Westminster Abbey, are greatly interested. They 
 move to the occasion — not being strong enough to 
 rise. Many of the passengers cherish a very em- 
 phatic desire to be asked to "do something " for the 
 concert. As a matter of fact, there is never any 
 difficulty in organising the concert. "Talent" 
 lurks in the most unexpected places, and talent is in- 
 clined to assert itself. 
 
 We approach the inevitable New England spin- 
 ster, who sees us coming, and straightens herself up 
 to meet us. She is very thin, and yellow, and nasal. 
 Her face is enveloped in a gauze veil, tightly 
 stretched, and she is always twitching her upper lip, 
 to free it from the embracing gauze — not the sort 
 of embrace that appeals to her. 
 
 She simpers a little as she reluctantly informs us 
 that she can do something for us, though she de- 
 spises publicity. She is not quite sure about her 
 voice on the ocean (I am — both on the ocean and 
 off), but she can try. And she can practise in the 
 saloon between now and the concert day. She would 
 like to sing, " Oh, That We Two Were Maying," 
 but of course — with some more simper — she will 
 need somebody to " may " with. She cannot " may " 
 alone. Also, she would prefer to " may " with a 
 gentleman. Can we find one for her? If so, she 
 will consent to appear. 
 
 It will be no easy matter unearthing a " gentle- 
 man " willing to " may " with this particular damsel. 
 
226 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 In fact, I refuse at first to be party to any such mean 
 trick. But there is a youth with an enormous voice 
 who has been singing in the saloon ever since we left 
 port — and who must have come on board for the 
 express purpose of singing. We corner him, and 
 
 ask him if he knows 
 " Oh, That We Two 
 ) Were Maying." Of 
 course he does. He 
 has known it for years. 
 It is very pretty, is it 
 , r . not ? There is a rhythm 
 yAyto it that is exquisite. 
 vj/' Sung in the gloaming, 
 it is delicious. Have we ever heard it sung in the 
 gloaming ? 
 
 I whisper to the hustler, that, after all, it is rather 
 " low down " to hurl the New England spinster at 
 this lad. He has never done us any harm. But 
 the hustler says " Liverpool orphans " and I am in- 
 stantly crushed. So be it. 
 
 " There's a very charming young lady on board — 
 from Massachusetts," says the hustler, " and she 
 sings ' Oh, That We Two Were Maying ' — or will 
 do so, if you will sing it with her. Will you? It is 
 for the benefit of the Liverpool orphans, you know." 
 I long to cry " Pause ! " and give the poor wretch 
 a chance, but the hustler digs me in the ribs, and I 
 am silenced. The singer's name is inscribed. He 
 
"They sang, 'Oh, that we two were maying' " 
 
The Concert 
 
 227 
 
 will chant " Oh, That We Two Were Maying" with 
 the New England spinster. He will get his ! 
 
 An English matron who wears ear-rings, a neck- 
 lace, bangles, a locket, rings and other jewels of 
 marked insincerity, tells us that she sings " Dear 
 Hear t," " I n 
 
 Sweet Sep tern- ^r^d^ 
 
 ber," and " Beau- 
 ty's Eyes." She 
 has a large reper- 
 toire of Hope 
 Temple, and Tos- 
 ti. Do we know 
 Tosti's " Good- 
 Bye"? The hus- 
 tler doesn't, and 
 I wonder how the 
 hustler has es- 
 caped. Tosti has 
 said more good- 
 byes than Patti. 
 
 The hustler appears to have an emphatic prefer- 
 ence for coon songs. He is an American from 
 Grand Rapids, Mich., and is "travelling for fur- 
 niture." The English matron, however, turns up 
 her nose at the mere mention of coon songs. She 
 will not pander to such a low taste. On board ship 
 the Englishwomen all sing sentimental ballads of 
 funereal import — ballads that deal with violets 
 
228 The Great Wet Way 
 
 wreathed on their graves, and with lost loves laid 
 to rest 'neath the daffodils in the village church- 
 yard. The American women warble rag-time, and 
 have a splendid assortment of Honolulu Susies, and 
 Mandies, and Daisies, and Anastasia Browns to 
 offer. In the British Isles you despise ballads, and 
 clamour for coon songs; in the United States, you 
 loathe coon songs, and hanker for ballads ; on board 
 ship, you get both, and are still not happy. 
 
 There is a college professor on the ship, and the 
 hustler tells me that a " serious " reading, or some- 
 thing of that sort, would be very valuable. The 
 professor is sitting, poring over a book, as we march 
 up to him. He has many whiskers, and much dig- 
 nity, but the hustler has no qualms at all. He prides 
 himself on his " push" ; most travellers do. What 
 we call " cheek " they label " push." The professor 
 listens to our tale of woe; we rush him into the 
 midst of the Liverpool orphans. The concert is 
 now " assuming gigantic proportions," according to 
 the hustler. It will be a stupendous thing. It will 
 be something to remember for the rest of our lives. 
 All who have taken part in it will love to recall that 
 fact in future years. And the Liverpool orphans 
 will fatten on it — if they are not already so fat that 
 increased flesh would end their earthly career. 
 
 "Well," says the professor, in staccato delibera- 
 tion, " if I can help you, of course, I shall be de- 
 lighted, Let me see" — reflectively — "if you like, 
 
The Concert 
 
 229 
 
 I could give you a nice little chat about ' The Ru- 
 baiyat' of Omar Khayyam, with selections " 
 
 "The what?" cries the hustler, apparently par- 
 alysed. 
 
 The professor repeats it. " I have my own ideas 
 about Omar Khayyam," he says, "and I fancy I 
 could make it light and interesting. It is a charm- 
 
 ed? 
 
230 The Great Wet Way 
 
 ing subject. Of course, I do not insist. Still, I 
 think that perhaps my fellow-passengers will enjoy 
 Omar Khayyam." 
 
 "Who is he?" queries the hustler, perplexed. 
 Then turning to me: "Have you ever heard of 
 him?" 
 
 It is mean of me, but I cannot help it; it is con- 
 temptible and unworthy, but I decide that no light 
 shall be shed upon the mystery of Omar Khayyam, 
 by me. So I look puzzled, and a trifle suspicious, 
 and — the professor looks amazed, as well he might. 
 
 " Of course, if you say it's all right, Professor," 
 continues the hustler dejectedly, " it must be. I take 
 it that you mean to give us a recitation. One thing 
 I'll ask you. You must excuse me. I suppose that 
 this Homer What's-his-name is — er — moral — the 
 sort of thing that is fit for ladies? Oh" — as the 
 professor makes a motion expressive of rising indig- 
 nation — " for myself, I don't care. For this gentle- 
 man " — pointing to me — " I don't care. But we 
 have our wives, and daughters, and mothers on 
 board, and we cannot take too many precautions. 
 Still, if you assure me, Professor " 
 
 The professor by this time has gauged the lit- 
 erary measure of the husder. He is amused, but 
 he is also annoyed. He resumes his book with 
 quiet dignity, remarks that he is sorry he is too busy 
 to take part in the concert, hopes all sorts of pleasing 
 results for the Liverpool orphans, and dismisses us ! 
 
The Concert 
 
 231 
 
 " I put my foot in it that time," says the hustler, 
 "but I can't help it. Suppose that Homer thing 
 turned out to be some improper, problem affair — 
 like a good many modern plays! Who would be 
 responsible? Why, I. He seems like a sober chap, 
 but I cannot announce anything I do not under- 
 stand. If he had suggested ' The Face on the Bar- 
 room Floor,' or ' Poker Flat,' or something of that 
 sort! I am sorry to have hurt his feelings, but I 
 am convinced that I did the right thing." 
 
 "So there's to be a concert," exclaims a heavily- 
 coated lady, interrupting us. " I thought I'd tell 
 you that if you are looking for talent my little girl 
 would be glad to oblige. She is only eight years old, 
 but she plays a Clementi sonatina and ' Valse Favour- 
 ite' beautifully. Some say that she is quite a prod- 
 igy, but I won't go as far as that. Come here, Joy, 
 and tell the gentle- 
 men what you can 
 do." 
 
 Joy looks much 
 more like Woe. She 
 is one of those ter- 
 r i b 1 e, ship-board 
 children who have 
 their hair cut " Bus- 
 ter Brown," wear 
 blue serge, and quar- 
 rel all day long with J' 8M S^jj^ , * ,?S: 
 
232 The Great Wet Way 
 
 their contemporaries. Joy says she hasn't practised, 
 and has forgotten how to play. To which mommer 
 replies that she is a naughty girl. Thereupon, Joy 
 insists that Signbr Jenkins, her instructor in New 
 York, has told her not to play before people. Mom- 
 mer is furious. She informs us that she pays ten 
 dollars a lesson to Signor Jenkins, and that Joy is 
 going to be a wonder. She is particularly anxious 
 for the Captain to hear her. Joy is in tears by 
 this time. Mommer threatens her with instant bed, 
 and no candies for six months. The scene has be- 
 come intensely emotional, and we drift away. 
 
 Another fond parent, of the feminine persuasion, 
 buttonholes us. She, too, has a sweet little daughter 
 who dances exquisitely. For years she has been to 
 " dancing school " in all its enormities, and it is, 
 quite likely that she will eventually become a profes- 
 sional. " Her father is dead against it," declares 
 the matron. " He sulks when it is mentioned. But 
 what is one to do with such talent? A pity to let 
 it go to waste I So I tell Pa not to be foolish, and 
 to let Malvina go ahead. She may be able to sup- 
 port us in luxury — he ! he 1 he ! — in our old age." 
 
 The husder is much interested. A dance will vary 
 the monotony of the bill, the star features of which, 
 at present, seem to be " Oh, That We Two Were 
 Maying," and some English ballads. 
 
 "The last time our Malvina danced," continues 
 mommer, "was at Mr. Callahan's Dancing School 
 
The Concert 233 
 
 in One-Hundred-and-Twenty-Fifth Street, and may 
 be she didn't go big ! She did one of them ' Salome ' 
 dances, imitating Gertrude Hoffman and Eva Tan- 
 guay. My ! She didn't do a thing to them ! " 
 
 The hustler straightens himself up. " No ' Sa- 
 lome ' dances for mine," he says. " They would 
 object to that sort of thing here. It may be all right 
 in New York, where people are sensational and friv- 
 olous, but on board an ocean-liner — perhaps little 
 Malvina will do some other dance for us." 
 
 Mommer is much chagrined. She has brought 
 Malvina's " Salome " costume with her on board, 
 knowing that there would be a concert, and a chance 
 for the sweet little thing to display her marvellous 
 gifts. Mommer is quite upset. Still, Malvina has 
 another dance, a most elaborate and complicated af- 
 fair, that it took her months to acquire. She made a 
 great hit in it at Mr. Callahan's Carnival. It is 
 much finer than any of the work of Isadora Duncan, 
 though of the same trend. 
 
 The hustler is happy. He proposes to book Mal- 
 vina. 
 
 "The concert will take place in the saloon?" 
 queries mommer. " That is most important." 
 
 " It certainly will," replies the hustler imperiously, 
 as though the ship were his. 
 
 " It will be necessary to have all the tables and 
 chairs removed," asserts Malvina's parent. " The 
 child will need all the space she can get, and more. 
 
234 The Great Wet Way 
 
 Her pirouettes are astonishing. Unless you promise 
 that every chair and table shall be taken away, I 
 cannot consent to let my Malvina appear. She might 
 injure herself." 
 
 The hustler laughs rather rudely. "Why, Ma- 
 dame," he says, "all those tables and chairs are 
 screwed down. They can't be moved. It would be 
 utterly impossible." 
 
 " Nonsense 1 " exclaims the matron heatedly. " In 
 half an hour the sailors could unscrew every bit of 
 furniture in the dining-room. It is an occasion, a 
 great occasion, and the Captain will give you every 
 facility. He always does. Imagine my Malvina 
 doing a classical dance dodging chairs and tables. 
 Well, I guess not 1 " 
 
 " The lady is quite right," I say maliciously to the 
 husder. "I feel sure that the Captain will agree to 
 the clearance of the saloon. He has a big crew, 
 idling their time away — loafing, smoking, and talk- 
 ing. He will be glad of the chance to set them to 
 work. They have done nothing since they left port. 
 It would be a pity to risk little Malvina's discom- 
 fiture." 
 
 The hustler glares at me stonily. He reckons on 
 my aid, and I have deserted him. He is alone, with 
 Malvina's mommer, figuratively speaking. The 
 situation is unpleasant. 
 
 " / will see the Captain, if you prefer it," says the 
 lady. " He is always very nice to me. My brother- 
 
The Concert 235 
 
 in-Iaw's cousin crossed with him last trip, and we 
 have grown very friendly. I'll ask him about re- 
 moving the chairs and tables, and I'll let you know 
 what he says." 
 
 So the husder erases Malvina's name from the 
 galaxy of talent, and we pursue our way, sadder and 
 wiser men. There is nothing like a conflict with tal- 
 ent, in mid-Adantic, to chill the enthusiasm of the 
 too-enthusiastic. After this, we visit many people, all 
 freighted with heaven-bestowed gifts. A young man, 
 who has " ribbon department " all over him, prom- 
 ises to oblige us with a reading from Charles Dick- 
 ens. It will be from " Oliver Twist " 
 or "Nicholas Nickleby." He used 
 to read from "The Pickwick Pa- 
 pers," but he felt that such humour 
 was too trivial. He would give us 
 the scene between Bill and Nancy 
 Sykes, or the Death of Smike. The 
 hustler would have preferred some- 
 thing jollier, he says, but he is satis- 
 fied. Beggars cannot be choosers. 
 
 An anaemic-looking curate, with a 
 most blotchy face, volunteers "The 
 Charge of the Light Brigade," which 
 even the hustler has heard before. His <09tf - 
 
 face brightens as he discovers this literary resting- 
 place for the sole of his foot. He knows "The 
 Charge of the Light Brigade " as " the thing they 
 
236 The Great Wet Way 
 
 always recite at concerts." It gladdens his heart. 
 No concert, on board ship, is worthy of its name and 
 its reputation without "The Charge of the Light 
 Brigade." 
 
 The banjo-soloist flourishes in mid-Atlantic. Usu- 
 ally the most imposing looking persons on the 
 steamer are banjo-soloists. You would scarcely have 
 dared to suspect them of it. Their appearance would 
 suggest that their specialty might be some beautiful 
 anthem work on the organ, or perhaps a chaste dal- 
 liance with the violincello. Not at all; they are 
 banjo-soloists. They glory in it. Their banjos are 
 on board pining to be twanged. They have a reper- 
 toire of awe-inspiring rag-time. All they need is an 
 accompanist. We have no trouble in securing banjo 
 solos. We could fill an entire programme with them. 
 They are the musical weeds of the ocean steamship's 
 concert, and grow apace. 
 
 The work of organising the ship's concert never 
 varies. Nor does the ship's concert. In the above 
 sketch of the typical quest for steamship entertain- 
 ment I have omitted the search for a chairman, 
 which is very edifying. It seems cruel to class a 
 chairman among " talent." The hustler endeavours 
 to pounce upon somebody of importance for this 
 office, and has considerable difficulty, for there are a 
 great many people who think that they are of im- 
 portance. There are generally a number of gentle- 
 men passenger-listed as " Colonel," or " General," or 
 
The Concert 237 
 
 "Honourable." Then there is a sprinkling of " Doc- 
 tors " — a somewhat abused title adopted by chiropo- 
 dists, manicurists, dentists, and tonsorial artists. 
 
 " Colonel," however, is always impressive, and the 
 bustler easily gets one, whom he instructs in his 
 duties. He must make a few remarks of a pathetic 
 nature, eulogising the Liverpool orphans, and bring- 
 ing home the charity to the hearts of the passengers. 
 Then he must introduce the various artists, and utter 
 a few pungent suggestions about the collection. 
 Sometimes the " Colonel" happens to be one of 
 those prosy old things who, once let loose, decline 
 all fastenings. I have known the " Colonel " to 
 speak for so long, that we thought we should sight 
 Sandy Hook before he had finished. We were un- 
 able to choke him off. We coughed. We jingled 
 coins. We were unduly obstreperous. But he 
 closed his " few remarks " only when his voice 
 gave out. 
 
 The "introductions" are not the least amusing 
 part of the ship's concert. The chairman feels in- 
 clined to rhapsodise, sometimes unduly. 
 
 " We shall now listen to that delightful, to that 
 v/orld-f amous, to that ever-moving duet, ' Oh, That 
 We Two Were Maying,' " he says eloquently; " Miss 
 Snooks of Massachusetts, and Mr. Pumstock of 
 Cohoes, who will interpret this lovely song, are, as 
 I am sure you will recognise when you have heard 
 them, artists of exceptional ability. It will be a great 
 
238 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 privilege to listen to them. I beg to introduce you 
 to Miss Snooks and Mr. Pumstock." 
 
 After which we are usually in for it. Miss 
 Snooks is nervous, and Mr. Pumstock isn't. The 
 accompanist is uncertain, and miserable. Some- 
 times the ship lurches while Miss Snooks is in the 
 very midst of her "maying," and Mr. Pumstock 
 glares at her, as she spoils his best effort. 
 
 With " The Charge of the Light Brigade " the 
 chairman is always at home. " This," he says, " the 
 work of that mystic poet, the divine Tennyson, needs 
 no comment. It speaks for itself. Its rhythm is one 
 of its most beautiful features. Many of you have 
 heard it before. Many of you may hear it again. 
 It has lived, and it will live. I have much pleasure 
 in introducing to you my young friend, Mr. Bore. 
 If Tennyson were alive, I am sure that he would 
 
 love to hear Mr. Bore 
 recite his wonderful 
 poem." 
 
 Tennyson — lucky poet 
 — is not alive. We are. 
 Some of us scarcely in- 
 dulge in the sentiments 
 that the chairman has 
 anticipated. Mr. Bore 
 is always the same, on 
 any line. The Cunard 
 version of " The Charge 
 
The Concert 239 
 
 of the Light Brigade " is quite identical with that 
 of the American or Atlantic transport lines. 
 
 The artists all look very coy and self-conscious 
 as they are reviewed by the chairman. It is a great 
 moment in their lives. They probably save their 
 programmes, and many years hence will tell proudly 
 of the time " when I sang in public, my dear, and 
 was spoken of as one of the finest artists of the day." 
 They are always willing to give as many encores as 
 they can crowd in. The encores resemble those that 
 occur in New York at the " first night " production 
 of a comic opera. If the audience happens to cough, 
 back comes the artist, convinced that it is an encore. 
 So it is on board ship. Every song produces more 
 of its kind — no matter how exhausting the kind. 
 The audience is invariably delighted. The women 
 have donned their best bibs and tuckers, and the 
 men, all combed and shining for the great event, 
 wear a look of Sunday rest. They always wonder 
 where the Captain is. I never do. I know. Cap- 
 tains have got to live their lives, which are not lives 
 of art — steamship concert art. We hope to get into 
 port some day, if the prolix old chairman will ever 
 stop talking — and so there is no use wondering where 
 the Captain is. Possibly he is singing " Oh, That 
 We Two Were Maying " with the purser. 
 
 The collection reminds one of church. Lovely 
 girls pass plates around, and the passengers drop in 
 their coins — doing it quickly, so that the coins shall 
 
240 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 immediately mingle with the contents of the plate, 
 and tell no tales ! Nobody wants his right hand to 
 know what his left hand has been doing — for the 
 Liverpool orphans! When this weighty business 
 has been transacted, there is a lull in the storm. The 
 amateurs pause, anxious to know what their efforts 
 have produced — the exact pecuniary value of, " Oh, 
 That We Two Were Maying," etcetera. 
 
 " Ladies and gentlemen," says the chairman at 
 last — his voice is grave and sonorous — " I have 
 much pleasure in announcing that we have collected 
 the splendid sum of $43.22" (it is generally a sum 
 that sounds like a dry-goods price — $43.22 reduced 
 from $45) "and this sum will make many dear 
 little orphans happy. It has been a most successful 
 
 and enjoyable concert. 
 We shall never forget 
 it. I should also like 
 to say that Mrs. Thin- 
 gamy, our generous 
 friend from Chicago, 
 who was not well 
 enough to attend the 
 concert, has just sent 
 down a two-dollar bill. 
 That makes our total 
 $45.22 — an excellent 
 total." 
 
 There is nearly al- 
 
The Concert 241 
 
 ways some Mrs. Thingamy whose generosity is ad- 
 vertised so pleasingly, and whose contribution 
 receives the chairman's eulogy. We, who have 
 popped in a secluded " quarter," feel duly impressed 
 by the lavish and reckless amount vouchsafed by 
 Mrs. Thingamy. But her love for the Liverpool 
 orphans is well known. She has mentioned it to 
 many people on deck. She is also a wise woman, for 
 she is never well enough to appear at the concert. 
 Her love for the Liverpool orphans is perhaps not 
 strong enough to submit to that test. 
 
 After the concert there is a cold collation. The 
 ship " treats." There is lemonade, and cake, and 
 sandwiches, and other delicacies of the church- 
 sociable brand. We all chat with the artists, and 
 fondly congratulate them. Airy felicitations of this 
 ilk are hard: 
 
 " Really, it was a most delightfully arranged 
 affair!" 
 
 "That song of yours, Miss Snooks, was a gem. 
 Even on board ship one could appreciate the quality 
 of your voice. Has Hammerstein heard you? " 
 
 "How splendidly you read Smike's death from 
 'Nicholas Nickleby,' Mr. Jones. You seemed to 
 feel it all. What an art 1 " 
 
 " You carried us away with your ' Charge of the 
 Light Brigade,' Mr. Bore. What a sweet thing it is 
 when properly recited. Of course it can be ruined ! " 
 
 "Honestly, we wept at your song, 'Take Me 
 
242 The Great Wet Way 
 
 Home To Mother,' and ' Let Me Die,' Miss Green. 
 It was jo appealing, and — oh, your voice is perfect." 
 
 " Mrs. Smith, that child of yours is a genius. It 
 will stamp itself upon the age. I have never heard 
 ' The Maiden's Prayer ' more astoundingly exe- 
 cuted!" 
 
 And then we go to bed, having done our duty by 
 the Liverpool orphans. The hustler says that he 
 can sympathise with any impresario. Hammerstein 
 can have his Manhattan Opera House. Still, he 
 feels highly gratified at the results of the concert. 
 It was entirely due to the artists. No, he refuses to 
 take the slightest credit to himself. 
 
XII 
 THE CUSTOM HOUSE 
 
 N extraordinary, an appar- 
 ently inexplicable change 
 comes o'er the spirit of the 
 home-steering American as 
 the pure ozone of the atmos- 
 phere becomes faintly charged 
 with the exhilarating flavour 
 of the Stars and Stripes. It 
 looms like a cloud, at first no 
 bigger than a man's hand, and gradually assumes 
 portentous shape. The careless observer believes 
 that the end of a merry holiday has cast its shadow 
 before; that the prospect of "settling down" — al- 
 ways a grim and an unlovely proceeding — is the 
 wet-blanket that appears to dampen the energies of 
 all passengers, especially those that are feminine. 
 The careless observer is of course — careless. Surely 
 the instincts of the most elementary patriotism 
 would prevent these sulky and disagreeable moods. 
 I assume invariably that every good American is 
 bubbling with ebullient joy at the mere idea of once 
 more treading a soil that is free from the myths of 
 European tradition. Every good American de- 
 clares, and asserts triumphantly, that this is indeed 
 
 343 
 
244 The Great Wet Way 
 
 the case. Who am I to doubt such asseverations? 
 People who have protested steadily all the way over, 
 at food, lodging, inhabitants, customs, and govern- 
 ments studied abroad, must be overjoyed that their 
 ordeal is past. I insist upon believing that they are 
 overjoyed, and that no inducement would take them 
 abroad again — until the next time. 
 
 This extraordinary, this apparently inexplicable 
 change that comes o'er their spirits slowly, yet crush- 
 ingly, what is it? This subtle, insidious dread that 
 seems to stamp all vivacity from the decks of the 
 ship, what does it signify, and why does it signify 
 it? One cannot overlook it. It is responsible for 
 curious contradictions and singular inconsistencies 
 in the behaviour of perfectly practical people. Let us 
 study dispassionately a few instances. 
 
 The delightful young woman who has amused 
 everybody by her entertaining descriptions of the 
 shops in London, and Paris, and Vienna is almost 
 unrecognisable as we near Sandy Hook. She has 
 told us of the funny experiences she had with dress- 
 makers and milliners. She has inveighed against 
 the costliness of European goods, and has insistently 
 told us that she is returning home in that impecun- 
 ious condition sometimes called " stony." She has 
 been most chatty and communicative, and we have 
 laughed heartily at her quaint observations. 
 
 The change that comes o'er her is astonishing. It 
 is inconceivable. She gloomily announces that 
 
The Custom House 
 
 245 
 
 though she diligently studied shopping methods 
 abroad, she never bought a thing! They tried to 
 persuade her to invest her' good money in dresses 
 and hats, but she positively declined. Why should 
 she buy abroad? Everybody knows that American 
 products are infinitely superior. She seems to have 
 developed very suddenly an undying hatred for all 
 European finery, and at the same time to have 
 changed from a light-hearted cosmopolitan to a 
 melancholy patriot. 
 
 The matron who has been intensely proud of the 
 souvenirs she has collected in foreign cities, and who 
 
 \5v 
 
246 The Great Wet Way 
 
 has assiduously led you to believe that her expendi- 
 tures were enormous, loses all the gay bravado of 
 her humour as the chart indicates a proximity to 
 Sandy Hook. She admits that her purchases were 
 foolish trifles, scarcely worth padding her trunk 
 with, and she goes so far as to specify that her en- 
 tire outlay was " under a hundred dollars." The 
 passengers are incredulous. The lady has worn con- 
 spicuously splendid chains of light pink corals from 
 Venice, and beautiful specimens of silver filigree 
 from Genoa. The value of these things that, at the 
 Lizard, ran into the thousands of dollars, suddenly 
 shrink, in the vicinity of Sandy Hook, to " under a 
 hundred dollars." There is a slump, compared 
 with which the fluctuations of Wall Street are mere; 
 trifles. 
 
 The gay young man who has worn two different 
 suits of clothes every day, and who has been very 
 confiding on the subject of the durability of English 
 cloth, suddenly appears garbed in unmistakable 
 New York. His naughty, unpatriotic sentiments 
 have vanished — melted into thin air. He says that 
 New York tailors are good enough for him. He 
 has been all over the world, and has never discov- 
 ered any sartorial artists who can cut clothes as they 
 cut them in New York. Many people imagine that 
 he buys his clothes abroad. It is ridiculous. They 
 simply do not understand how to build clothes in 
 Europe. Perhaps London cloth lasts longer. Just 
 
The Custom House 247 
 
 perhaps. But New York is the greatest city in the 
 universe for clothes that are elegant and personal. 
 Abroad, clothes are impersonal. The gay young 
 man seems nervous and "not himself." 
 
 The pretty girl who attracted so much attention 
 at the concert by the exquisite evening gown that she 
 wore — a gown that had " Paris " marked all over 
 it — and who told all enquirers that she had several 
 others even nicer in the hold of the ship, wears the 
 look of the hunted antelope as the steamer nears her 
 destination. She is clad in a simple shirt-waist and 
 skirt, and she appears at dinner in one of those pleas- 
 ant litde American blouses that one sees in New 
 York marked " four ninety-eight, reduced from six- 
 fifty." She is from Scranton, Pa., and she tells 
 everybody what splendid dressmaker.s they have in 
 Scranton, Pa. Honestly, it would have been ludi- 
 crous for her to buy anything in Paris and Vienna. 
 She saw nothing there to compare with the " crea- 
 tions " she could always find in Scranton, Pa. 
 
 The trusting and loquacious individual in the 
 smokeroom who, on cold days, has worn a fur over- 
 coat that nobody but European royalty or American 
 bad actors would dare to wear, and who has thought- 
 lessly displayed the label inside, under your very 
 eyes, becomes very pensive as the trip nears its end. 
 He asks you pathetically if you think he ought to 
 " declare " — a pair of shoes he bought in Europe. 
 
 " You see, I was there for four months," he says 
 
248 
 
 The Great Wet Way 
 
 diffidently, " and shoes do wear out. I tramped 
 about a good deal, and finally bought some new 
 shoes. Nothing else whatsoever. Now, is it neces- 
 sary to declare them? Of course, I am perfectly 
 willing to pay duty on them." 
 
 He has a hunted look in his eyes. The fur over- 
 coat is lying across the seat, and the label, from 
 force of habit, is ostentatiously displayed. You 
 solemnly advise him to declare his new shoes. After 
 all, it is the best policy to live up to rules and regu- 
 lations. He thanks you dejectedly, and agrees with 
 you. He will declare the shoes at a sovereign. They 
 really cost a trifle less than a sovereign. 
 
 The " good fellow " who 
 has been the " life and soul " 
 of the trip, and whose ex- 
 uberant moods have made 
 him immensely popular, ap- 
 pears to be one of those 
 uncanny people freighted 
 with a guilty secret. He has 
 been joviality personified all 
 the way over; his ringing 
 laughter was infectious; his 
 humorous sallies were side- 
 splitting. But as the hustle 
 and bustle that precede ar- 
 rival are noted, he sits and 
 mopes. He button-holes pas- 
 
The Custom House 249 
 
 sengers, and asks them leading questions about their 
 purchases abroad. He is exceedingly interested in 
 what they bought. There is a sinister look in his 
 eyes as he awaits their answers. His manner sug- 
 gests that he has " skipped " his hotel bill, or some- 
 thing worse. He is morose, and occasionally cyni- 
 cal. He gives vent to utterances that are distress- 
 ingly unpatriotic. 
 
 Says he : " What I don't like about this business 
 of getting back is the Custom House treatment. 
 They force you to declare your purchases abroad, 
 and then go through your trunks just the same. You 
 make an oath and they don't believe it. In no other 
 country are you treated so discourteously." 
 
 Of course this is horrible. You hate to listen to 
 it. Sometimes your blood runs cold as you hear 
 perfectly good Americans saying such odious things 
 about an institution that is almost honoured by tra- 
 dition. So many of them do it. They do it altru- 
 istically, for they have never made any purchases 
 that could possibly inconvenience them. They af- 
 fect to regard the Custom House as a very trying 
 ordeal — goodness knows why. The only things they 
 are bringing back with them that they did not take 
 over are such articles as tooth-brushes, face-powder, 
 collar-buttons, shoe-laces, and very plain handker- 
 chiefs without any incriminating lace on them ! Yet 
 these people attack a benevolent scheme most out- 
 rageously. 
 
250 The Great Wet Way 
 
 In fact, the extraordinary, the apparently inex- 
 plicable change that comes o'er the spirit of the 
 home-steering American is due to the Custom 
 House. There is no need to make any further mys- 
 tery about it. It is that, and it is nothing more. On 
 land good Americans rather admire the Custom 
 House. The greatness of the country is due to the 
 Custom House. The splendidly conceived idea of 
 preventing thoughtless citizens from frittering away 
 money, earned in America, on rapacious foreigners, 
 has made the country what it is. But at sea they 
 are not nearly as enthusiastic, or if they are, they 
 keep their enthusiasm to themselves, as a sentiment 
 too sacred to be expressed in vulgar joy. Good 
 Americans do not look forward to the Custom 
 House, as of course they should do. They never 
 rejoice at the idea of proving to extremely pleasant 
 officials the sheer fact of their undying patriotism. 
 When you meet " politicians " on the ocean steamer, 
 you find them just as lacking in proper affection for 
 that benign institution as any of the non-politicians. 
 Yet these men are stern patriots. They tell you so 
 at dinners and meetings, in outbursts of irrepressible 
 eloquence. 
 
 Most people are very fractious the day before 
 they land. They whisper a good deal. Occasion- 
 ally they seem to start when a passenger whom they 
 have not noticed before, approaches them. They 
 look anxious and moody, haggard with secret cares. 
 
The Custom House 251 
 
 They have evidently drained the cup 
 
 of joy to its dregs, and the dregs are 
 
 bitter. They rarely talk about the 
 
 good time that is awaiting them at 
 
 home, for preceding that possible 
 
 good time there is the Custom 
 
 House rearing itself before their 
 
 mental vision. They look upon the Custom House 
 
 as a sort of stone wall through which they must butt 
 
 their heads to home and liberty. 
 
 Passengers are seldom frank and trusting. Your 
 very best friend never tells you till weeks after that 
 she had seventeen real lace handkerchiefs and twelve 
 pairs of gloves, concealed about her ingenuous per- 
 son. You feel rather hurt at this lack of candour, 
 especially as you have boldly admitted to her that 
 you were declaring three boxes of cigarettes. You 
 feel rather pleased, however, that you did not ad- 
 mit six boxes of cigars that somehow or other you 
 quite forgot to declare. 
 
 On one occasion, a lady who had sat at our table 
 all the way over, and whom we had grown to look 
 upon as the embodiment of fragrant truth, almost 
 shattered my belief in the veracity of human nature. 
 She showed us a list of all the purchases she was de- 
 claring. It was in black and white and figures. It 
 was full of detail. She had not forgotten to set 
 down a few feathers, some inexpensive dress trim- 
 mings, and — if I may be allowed to say it — half a 
 
252 The Great Wet Way 
 
 dozen pairs of simple, unassuming lisle-thread stock- 
 ings. Honesty looked from her eyes. She really 
 seemed to love the Custom House. She said that 
 she thought it was fun, and a capital field for the 
 study of human nature. 
 
 On the dock I noticed that she walked about a 
 good deal, and seemed unwilling to sit down. We 
 advised her to sit on her trunk, as it was dreadful 
 to see her prowling about, tiring herself out. She 
 said, rather nervously, that she had been sitting for 
 a week, and that it was good to walk. Nothing 
 would induce her to take a seat. The mere idea 
 seemed repulsive. We met her outside the dock, 
 after the examination, as she was stepping into a car- 
 riage. She was rather merry. 
 
 " Now," she said, " I'm going to sit down, if I 
 can. I say if I can, because I have twenty yards of 
 heavy brocaded silk wound around me. Under these 
 circumstances, you will realise that it is not easy to 
 rest. You nearly gave the show away with your 
 ridiculous politeness. It is a wonder that you did 
 not notice how stout I had grown. As soon as I 
 get home, I shall — bant." 
 
 This sort of thing destroys one's faith in human 
 nature. But it is just as well not to have too much 
 faith in that sort of nature — at the Custom House. 
 
 " All hope abandon, ye who enter here." 
 
 The end of every trip to the fanciful observer is — 
 Hell, or at least Purgatory. All those timid, fear- 
 
The Custom House 253 
 
 riddled souls that cross the gang-plank of the liner 
 to the ugly, cold and squalid dock, where they must 
 stand, denuded of hyprocrisy, cant, mendacity, and a 
 criminal love for the wares of other climes, until they 
 have atoned, or until their innocence is established, 
 seem like lost ones. Their material joys are now 
 forgotten in the horror of expiation. They have 
 sinned, and they must pay the penalty. Avenging 
 spirits will pry into the very innermost recesses — of 
 their trunks! There can be no escape. The wages 
 of sin is — the Custom House. 
 "All hope abandon, ye who enter here." 
 At the Custom House all are equal. The haughty 
 ones and the exclusive ones, the posers and the 
 prattlers, the merry souls and the solemn souls, those 
 who have amused you and those who have bored 
 you — all are arraigned at that mighty bar. The man 
 who brings into the United States nothing in the 
 world but his tooth-brush must hold it up to the 
 gaze of relentless officials. The lady who has sworn 
 by her grandfather's beard — or anything they want 
 her to swear by — that all her beautiful Paris gowns 
 are pure and unadulterated New York, must prove 
 it. She may have sewn a Siegel-Cooper lable on a 
 Doucet confection. Of what will it avail her? Noth- 
 ing. Her sin will be unveiled. This is her purgatory. 
 " All hope abandon, ye who enter here." 
 But all hope is not abandoned. Staid yet eminent 
 people suddenly acquire the actor's art. Some of 
 
2^4 The Great Wet Way 
 
 the very best acting done outside of a theatre — acting 
 that is often on a par with the most excellent work 
 seen inside a theatre — may be noticed on any dock 
 after the arrival of a crowded steamer. 
 
 The dame who has snubbed everybody all the way 
 over, and whose boast it is that she can never be 
 amiable to people to whom she has not been prop- 
 erly introduced, acts the part of a delightfully gay 
 and ingenuous young person to the Custom House 
 inspector. She is shivering in her shoes at certain 
 awful possibilities, but as she hands him her keys, 
 you would never guess it. She is quite eager to pre- 
 sent her keys. She appears to have taken a great 
 fancy to the Custom House inspector and to ask one 
 thing only : that he explore her trunks, and see what 
 a good girl is she. As he possesses himself of the 
 keys she talks to him in a careless but perfectly 
 friendly way. 
 
 " I'm afraid that I'm not much of a sinner," she 
 says lightly. " You see, I cross so often that I've 
 learned my lesson. Why, I declare, it was you who 
 went over my trunks last year! Don't you remem- 
 ber? You took a great deal of trouble, and you 
 found — nothing. Surely, you remember? I told 
 you about the theatres in Paris, and you seemed very 
 interested." 
 
 There may be a tremor in her voice, but she is 
 really a very good actress — one of those highly- 
 strung emotional actresses who are nevertheless ar- 
 
"Appears to take a great fancy to the inspector" 
 
The Custom House 
 
 2$$ 
 
 tists in repression. Though her soul is racked, she 
 hums an air. She walks away from the inspector 
 and chats gracefully with an adjacent passenger 
 whom she has snubbed during the trip. This is what 
 stage people call " business." Good actresses often 
 have " business " with supernumeraries, to whorri 
 they appear to be telling the secrets of their past. 
 Yet she had one eye on the inspector all the time. 
 It is a difficult part to play. She sees her gowns 
 pducked from the trunk and cast upon the dock. 
 She beholds all her cherished trifles rudely manipu- 
 lated by an insensate man. Yet she smiles. Her 
 part is to appear to be enjoying it all. Has actress 
 ever been asked to simulate a more fiendish emo- 
 tion? 
 
 Many women affect to 
 regard the inspector as a 
 sort of long-lost brother. 
 As he is assigned to the 
 task of investigating their 
 earthly goods, they heave 
 sighs of relief. The un- 
 initiated might think that 
 they had crossed the 
 ocean just to meet this 
 sweet, inspecting person. 
 They seem so glad and 
 so happy. They have 
 nothing to conceal, noth- 
 
256 The Great Wet Way 
 
 ing to fear. They are quite sure that he must dislike 
 his job very much, and they want to help him. They 
 just yearn to help him ; to make things easy for him, 
 so that he can get home to his wife and children. Of 
 course he has a wife and children. That is why he 
 is so human and so charming. These are the 
 women who are so "uppish" with menials, and so 
 stand-off-ish with the average mortal. All is changed 
 at the dock. They are overflowing with the milk of 
 human kindness. 
 
 " I've travelled all over Europe," says the dowa- 
 ger, who has just handed her keys to the inspector, 
 and who looks as though she would love to slay him. 
 " I've been through the Customs of Germany, 
 France, Italy, Hungary, and England, and I'm 
 bound to say, that for real courtesy and innate 
 chivalry New York beats them all. I have never 
 had any trouble in New York." 
 
 She smiles a slow and tortured smile. The in- 
 spector is polite, but quite cold. He is not inclined 
 to discuss the Customs of other countries ; he is busy 
 enough with those of his own. He holds no brief 
 for chivalry. He is a man confronted with his duty, 
 and he is there to do it. The joyous remarks of the 
 dowager count for nothing at all. He discovers a 
 gown that she has not declared. The poor lady can 
 a,ct no longer. Picturesque indignation, outraged 
 delicacy, a wild and impassioned appeal to his better 
 nature take the place of mere filigree frivolity. 
 
The Custom House 257 
 
 " I have worn that dress for years," she says. " It 
 is old. It was not really worth bringing back. I am 
 going to give it to my cook, who can always use my 
 cast-off clothes." 
 
 The inspector has no sense of humour, or if he has, 
 his experiences with the vagaries of returning ma- 
 trons have dulled it. The gown is decollete, and it 
 has a long, swishing train. Yet he does not deris- 
 ively picture the cook in her kitchen inside the 
 beautiful dress. He does not contemptuously ask if 
 Mary Jane always peels potatoes in " full evening 
 dress." The dowager rages. The chivalry of the 
 New York Customs is routed for ever. Henceforth 
 she will swear by Germany, France, Italy, Hungary, 
 and England. 
 
 Efforts are made to engage the ruthless inspector 
 in the distracting joys of tea-table talk. Anxious 
 women tell him pleasant little stories. They narrate 
 pungent anecdotes of the trip abroad, cutting out 
 all allusions to their experiences in the European 
 marts. They ask him many questions, and are ex- 
 tremely interested in the New York weather, the 
 latest murder case, the newest play, and the most 
 recent political developments. All the while he is 
 churning up the contents of trunks. He is stirring 
 up their good clothes as though they were soup. He 
 is running his hands along the sides of the trunks; 
 he is lifting up carefully arranged garments; he is 
 unfastening everything that is fastened, and he is 
 
258 The Great Wet Way 
 
 performing the feats of a conjurer with innocent 
 little molehills of which he makes mountains. The 
 anxious women try to be light-hearted. It is up-hill 
 work. The New Thought is as impotent as the good 
 Old Thought to induce mental serenity and an un- 
 budging poise in the Custom House. 
 
 The men are just as distraught — especially those 
 men who have bought nothing but shoe-laces. One 
 wonders why they are so dreadfully nervous about 
 shoe-laces — but they are. Even if the shoe-laces 
 were confiscated, one can obtain the article, at most 
 reasonable rates, all over the United States. Yet 
 their brows are furrowed; they are haggard and 
 lank; they seem to wish themselves at the bottom of 
 the sea — and all because of those silly little shoe- 
 laces. 
 
 People sit for hours on that cold and clammy 
 dock, waiting for their trunks to be fished up from 
 the bowels of the ship. They look miserable until 
 the trunks appear, and then, much more miserable. 
 One would think that they would be glad to see 
 faithful and long-tried boxes that have been hidden 
 from them for a whole week in the hold of the ship. 
 They want their trunks, of course, but they seem to 
 hate the sight of them. They have lost all joy in 
 their treasures. These appear to be full of Dead 
 Sea fruit — which is probably dutiable. 
 
 At the dock you hate all the nice people with 
 whom you have been so chummy all the way across, 
 
The Custom House 
 
 259 
 
 nor have you any use for the passengers whom you 
 have been most anxious to meet. Human nature, 
 stripped of its "party manners," confronts you. 
 Men and women who had been so light-hearted and 
 so delightful for seven days are now facing stern 
 realities. You can no longer lure them into polite 
 conversation. Just try it. Go and ask the dowager 
 whose silken underwear is being displayed to a gap- 
 ing crowd if she prefers Guy de Maupassant to 
 Balzac. Question the pretty girl who is vociferously 
 declaring that certain brand-new gowns are brand- 
 old, as to the latest thing in " two-steps." Ask the 
 
 tfeW* 
 
260 The Great Wet Way 
 
 apparently afflicted father, who has forgotten to» 
 smoke five hundred cigarettes on the trip, if he would 
 declare "no trumps" with one ace and a guarded 
 king. Endeavour to make polite conversation on, 
 classical topics with the college graduate, whose 
 beautiful suit of London evening clothes is being 
 criticised by a mirthless menial. 
 
 These people who have been so smiling and so 
 convivial will glare at you. Life is real, life is earn- 
 est, and the Custom House is its goal. Especially 
 if you are "all through," and ready to sally forth 
 and enjoy New York, will they loathe you. They 
 are selfish people. Instead of rejoicing at your eman- 
 cipation, and throwing confetti at you as you march 
 proudly from the dock, a free man and a righteous 
 one, wearing the hall-mark of the Custom House on 
 your suit case, they seem to be victims of the worst 
 emotions — envy, jealousy, and irritating incredulity. 
 Misery loves company. At the Custom House 
 everybody who " gets through " is unwillingly parted 
 with by those who have not " got through." 
 
 It is galling, of course. People who have been 
 righted in the eyes of the Customs always look so 
 fiendishly triumphant. They cannot conceal their 
 joy, and make no effort to do so. In fact, one might 
 almost accuse them of wilfully rubbing it in. 
 
 You sit wearily watching the inspector discover 
 that a dozen new collars were bought abroad. He ia 
 quite right, for they were, and you are too tired to 
 
ine custom nouse 201 
 
 contradict, when a bouncing young thing rushed up 
 and says: "Still at it! We're all through. No 
 trouble at all. I can't understand why people worry 
 themselves so. Why, you'll be an hour yet. Our 
 inspector was a perfect dear, but of course, we had 
 nothing to declare." 
 
 How you despise that girll You never want to 
 meet the heardess, unsympathetic minx again. She 
 is so lively, and you feel so depressed. 
 
 Or, your room-mate appears, and simply laughs 
 at your plight. You have been very kind to that 
 boy. You waited on him when he was ill, and you 
 declined to unpack your valise so that he could have 
 more room for his ridiculous clothes. 
 
 " I'm through ! " he says exultantly. " The ordeal 
 is over. As a matter of fact, it is no ordeal at all. 
 The United States wants to protect itself. It is 
 quite right. If unscrupulous people will smuggle, 
 then they must expect — whatever they get. You 
 seem to be having a hard time of it, old chap. Never 
 mind. It will all be the same in a hundred years. So 
 long! Awfully glad to have met you. Call me up 
 sometime, if you ever get through." 
 
 He goes off whisding — the cub! To think that 
 you have been a father to that boy, and that he leaves 
 you without a qualm in the midst of all your collars ! 
 Certainly the Custom House brings out the worst 
 traits in human nature. You never really know a 
 man until you have seen him at the Custom House. 
 
262 The Great Wet Way 
 
 It is there that you meet human frailty, naked and 
 unashamed. 
 
 The young woman with whom you have danced 
 on deck, in sheer kindliness of heart, because nobody 
 else would dance with her — and she really had no 
 idea of waltzing — is unfeeling and harsh. She comes 
 up and tells you that she thought you had gone 
 long ago. 
 
 " I've been through half an hour," she says gaily, 
 " but I kind of hate to tear myself away. It is really 
 awful funny, isn't it? I watched an old lady who 
 had sewn a new lace shawl in an old petticoat, 
 and she was most humorous. She told the Custom 
 House inspector that she was eccentric, and always 
 lined her old petticoats with new lace shawls. Hal 
 Ha ! Then there was Mrs. Snooks, that old hatchet- 
 faced thing, who always looked at. us through im- 
 pertinent lorgnettes. She had two dozen real lace 
 handkerchiefs in a candy box, and she informed the 
 inspector that she couldn't for the life of her think 
 how they had got there. Fun? No show can com- 
 pete with it. I'd like to stay longer, but I must be 
 off now." Then, merrily to the inspector, who has 
 condemned all my collars, "Let him off lightly 
 please, mister. He's a good boy." 
 
 It is gruesome. You watch her tripping lightly 
 away, casting a laughing jest at all the sufferers, and 
 then she disappears. You never liked her, but you 
 hate to see her go — out — out — into the world. She 
 
The Custom House 
 
 263 
 
 is really a very horrid woman, but you need her at 
 this moment. 
 
 If each passenger were locked in a room with his 
 inspector, the Custom House ordeal would be far 
 less trying. The fact that your earthly belongings 
 are being investigated in front of a cruel crowd is 
 the fact that hurts. Of course, this is due to foolish 
 self-consciousness, but self-consciousness is very gen- 
 eral at the end of an ocean trip. 
 
 "Did you declare this?" asks the inspector of 
 the luckless woman, as he holds up an imposing 
 bunch of false curls. 
 
 Now, in a room, alone with the inspector and her 
 conscience, this woman would wax coy and coquet- 
 tish. She would smile and be 
 rather winsome. She might even 
 crack a joke, or dig the in- 
 spector in the ribs and say, " You 
 naughty boy ! " But on the dock, 
 surrounded by women, who know 
 what false curls mean, because 
 they all wear them, and by men 
 who also know what they mean, 
 although they don't wear them, 
 the wretched owner shrinks into 
 her shell, and invents absurd ex- 
 cuses, good enough for any farce. 
 The curls are not for herself, but 
 for her housemaid. Or some- 
 
264 The Great Wet Way 
 
 body has put them in her trunk as a practical joke. 
 If she asserted that they had grown there during 
 the trip, nobody would be surprised. 
 
 Women whose power over men is tremendous, 
 and who might decide that the Custom House in- 
 spector was a man — although appearances argue 
 against it on the dock — cannot arrive at that de- 
 cision before a peevish crowd. Clever women who 
 see the flaws in any man's coat of armour, find that 
 their marvellous perspicacity counts for nothing on 
 that dock. Cold eyes are watching them; unsympa- 
 thetic glances chill their fervour. Women whose 
 boast it is that they can wind any man round their 
 litde fingers are hopeless amateurs in this public 
 torture chamber. All their sacred possessions 
 are rushed out and "assessed" by men who 
 could be made to tremble at the wiles of splendid 
 coquetry. 
 
 The New England spinster " gets through " as soon 
 as the immaculate beauty with the liquid eyes — in 
 fact, sooner, for the New England spinster prides 
 herself on travelling with nothing but a valise and 
 " one suit of clothes." Perhaps her face is a further 
 guarantee of her extreme integrity. She laughs at 
 all fripperies and foibles. It is just possible, of 
 course, bearing in mind the fact that all Custom 
 House inspectors are men — or were at least born 
 masculine — that they hurry her through to get her 
 out of the pretty picture as quickly as possibly. This 
 
The Custom House 264 
 
 may sound uncharitable. The Custom House is an 
 uncharitable topic. 
 
 Most people try to make "personal hits" with 
 Custom House inspectors. This is a great mistake. 
 If passengers will think the matter over carefully, 
 they will realise that the inspectors have been inspect- 
 ing for a long time. No brand of passenger is 
 new, or unexpected, to the inspector. He has inves- 
 tigated cranks, and non-cranks. In his heart of 
 hearts he is not in the least interested in any pas- 
 senger. He is not yearning for the latest European 
 news. Nor has he dragged himself from his warm 
 bed to indulge in tea-table talk with pleasant young 
 women. Of course, he is a man, but he is also a 
 machine. He is not particularly fond of you — why 
 should he be? — but he is not foolish enough to hate 
 you. You look upon him as an enemy; he regards 
 you as his unpleasant duty. You consider him un- 
 sympathetic; he views you as a nuisance, because all 
 duty is a nuisance. All duty is a fearful bore ; there- 
 fore the inspector is not overjoyed to meet you. He 
 has met people just like you, and will meet them 
 again — perhaps to-morrow. 
 
 The Custom House inspector is prepared for all 
 emergencies. He does not court them, but he waits 
 for them. You cannot delude him by humming a 
 merry air when you hand him your keys. You can- 
 not deceive him by opening all your trunks and 
 shrugging your shoulders callously. You cannot in- 
 
266 The Great Wet Way 
 
 duce him to believe that you love him for himself, 
 and that you would sooner spend an hour with a 
 Custom House inspector than with any other per- 
 son on earth. He knows. He is on his guard. The 
 most affectionate passengers on the dock are those 
 that hide a dutiable secret. 
 
 Never appear to be bored. That is a very popu- 
 lar pose, but it is played out. It is very idiotic. Any- 
 body who could be bored at the Custom House in- 
 vestigation would be bored by the fires of Hades. 
 So many people assume nonchalant airs, and these 
 are usually the culprits 1 Better to utter indignant 
 denunciation — which is at least consistent — or to af- 
 fect a reckless, intoxicated jollity — which is picturesque 
 — than to appear bored. A human being can be a 
 great many things at the Custom House, and usually 
 is, but he cannot be bored. It is impossible. Every 
 sunbeam has its mote; every transatlantic passen- 
 ger has his flaw. It may be no larger than a collar 
 button, but he has it. It is absurd to pretend that 
 you don't care a hang what happens to your trunks 
 — those trunks are the joy of your life. The in- 
 spector knows that they are as dear to you as your 
 flesh and blood. 
 
 Never tell the inspector that you have arranged 
 everything so that he can see at a glance what you 
 own — that your clothes are in one drawer, your col- 
 lars in another, and your shoes in a third. Inspect- 
 ors do not expect such delightful consideration. Do 
 
The Custom House 267 
 
 not insist that you bought a " wardrobe trunk " just 
 because it is simpler for the inspectors to examine. 
 They never believe you. They are doubting 
 Thomases. They listen to much pleasant fiction, to 
 many airy fantasies, to splendid flights of exalted 
 imagination, but they will rout out your pet sins, 
 and ask for the duty thereon. 
 
 They are not really bad men. Some of them are 
 surely good to their mothers. They probably eat, 
 and drink at times, and behave just like human be- 
 ings. It is also conceivable that they can laugh at 
 a good joke — but not at the good joke you tell them 
 as they excavate your new hat from its hiding place. 
 They go to bed at night, and get up in the morn- 
 ing — get up at ungodly hours, when you insist upon 
 arriving before breakfast. They are also exceed- 
 ingly sensible. They even reason, and many of 
 them appear to have studied the rules of logic. 
 
 People who assume that Custom House inspectors 
 have the brains of a new-born babe, and a passion 
 for fairy stories that a seven-year-old child would 
 reject as far-fetched, suffer a rude awakening. 
 
 Never tell your Custom House inspector, as he 
 walks with you to your trunks, that you are going 
 to give a little dinner next week to some very dear 
 friends, and that you hope he will be one of the 
 merry throng. Do not ask him to share your box 
 at the opera, or beg him to let you know his wife's 
 " At Home " day, as you want to call. Do not try 
 
268 The Great Wet Way 
 
 to cheer him by the tidings that you have brought a 
 beautiful meerschaum pipe from Europe for him, 
 which you intend to present him as soon as you 
 have paid duty on it. Nothing doing. 
 
 Do not make frantic efforts to like the Custom 
 House inspector. Love him only as you love all 
 your fellow-creatures, for he is a fellow-creature. 
 There may be times when you would like to qualify 
 the " fellow " with one good whopping adjective, 
 and the " creature " with another, but those times 
 are only the dark and melancholy ones. It is very 
 hard to love a Custom House inspector as a fellow- 
 creature ; but it is much harder to like him as a man. 
 Do not try it. You will fail, and it will boot you 
 nothing. 
 
 Be yourself at the Custom House examination. 
 Even if you would sooner be each of a dozen other 
 people, be yourself — your blithe, unaffected, yet 
 practical self. If you had to undergo some painful 
 surgical operation you would not be insane enough 
 to tell the doctor that you really enjoyed it; you 
 would not pose as bored in order to deceive the 
 man. You might ask for chloroform or ether, and 
 personally I see no reason why the painful opera- 
 tion at the Custom House should be performed 
 without anaesthetics. It would be easier for you 
 and far simpler for the inspectors. A dock full of 
 chloroformed passengers, happily unconscious of all 
 the agony that their poor trunks suffer, would be a 
 
The Custom House 
 
 269 
 
 perfectly consistent innovation. You can almost 
 hear the glad cries of the reawakened travellers: 
 
 "Is it over? Thank goodness!" 
 
 " I never felt it at all. Did you? " 
 
 "Am I through, inspector? Oh, how quick you 
 were." 
 
 " / rather liked the sensation. It is not disagree- 
 able." 
 
 " It didn't hurt a bit. Can I get up now? " 
 
 Many a passenger with courageous soul, who 
 will go through appendicitis unflinchingly, will balk 
 
 frk-V*^ 
 
270 The Great Wet Way 
 
 at the Custom House, where no anaesthetics are 
 used. Why inveigh against vivisection, and coun- 
 tenance the slow tortures of the Custom House, 
 where all men pose as liars — the best and the worst? 
 Why not make it painless, and even enjoyable? 
 Think of the joy of awakening to learn that all your 
 trunks have been opened, and are closed again; that 
 if you have sinned, you have been found out pain- 
 lessly, and that if you are a villain, nobody but the 
 inspector knows the extent of your villainy. Think 
 of all this that might be, and compare it with what is. 
 The injury to tender consciences is irreparable. 
 Perhaps the very moustache on your lip has been 
 grown abroad, and you are importing it. The 
 freckles on your face have been made in foreign 
 climes, and you are smuggling them in, free of duty. 
 The very corns on your feet are the result of pranc- 
 ing around foreign roads, and you do not "declare " 
 them. Yet the Custom House rules are very strict. 
 They are relentless. They contain no loophole. 
 There is no reason on earth why you should not pay 
 duty on increased avoirdupois obtained abroad by 
 foreign products. All these thoughts hurt a pious 
 man. He wishes to do his duty by his country; he 
 abominates the idea of wrong; it is quite repulsive 
 to him. What passenger, who has declared every- 
 thing, does not feel that he should have declared 
 everything else? There are sins of omission, as 
 well as sins of commission. Many passengers com- 
 
The Custom House 
 
 271 
 
 mit; many more omit. As a matter of fact, every 
 returning American passenger should pay duty on 
 himself. He is not quite the same as when he left. 
 The difference is, of course, foreign. Why should 
 he bring home that difference? What right has 
 he to leave it undeclared? Suppose that a bad man 
 goes to Europe without a conscience, and comes back 
 with one — why should the United States let it in? 
 Why should a foreign conscience be allowed full 
 sway here? 
 
 The Custom House is full of subtleties. The 
 more one hunts, the more subtleties one finds. Per- 
 haps it is just as well to let it alone. Let sleeping 
 dogs lie, and let transatlantic passengers — lie, too. 
 The former will do it in one way, and the latter in 
 another.