ABOUT the middle of April, a little more than a year after my fearful experience on board the Brewster, I might have been seen, (if anybody had been watching), in the vicinity of the Pacific Steamship Company’s buildings, at the foot of Canal street, New York, making inquiry as to the rates of passage from New York to San Francisco. I had about recovered from my maritime scare.
“One hundred dollars, first cabin,” said the clerk; “seventy-five dollars second; and forty dollars steerage. The cabin tickets, however, are all sold. We have but a few steerage tickets left.”
“The deuce!” I exclaimed, forgetting my good manners, in the agony of disappointment.
It was two days prior to the sailing of the Ocean Queen. I did not like the idea of going in the steerage, for I had been informed that it was “rough,” and that even a soldier would find it so; nor did I relish waiting eight days for the next steamer.
“Pshaw!” I ejaculated.
“You wanted a cabin ticket, I suppose?”
“Couldn’t think of going in the steerage; I have distant relations who have been in Congress.”
“You might,” he said, with some hesitation, “be crowded into the cabin, but I have no cabin ticket to sell you. If you will take a steerage ticket, I am confident you can arrange it with the purser to get transferred to the cabin.”
“Do you think so?”
“I am sure of it.”