An amateur hypnotist was the next to oblige. “Will some gentleman kindly step up and assist the [106] ]Professor in this demonstration?” he requested. Dead silence; nobody made a move. The Professor smiled patiently, and repeated his request; no takers. Finally the Captain, who had drifted in, stepped up, remarking, “Try your stunt on me, Professor.” (Deafening applause.) The amateur hypnotist took the Captain in hand and made a few passes at him, and he took the count in six seconds. “Happy man!” cried the Professor, fixing the subject with his glittering eye. “Happy man! you are soused for fair, and are opening vintage wine.” “Whee!” said the Captain, bracing himself against Davy Jones’s locker. “Frappe two [107] ]more quarts! Line up, boys!” (Tumultuous applause, and cries of “Don’t wake him up!”) But the Professor did wake him up, and the Captain bowed sheepishly and returned to the wheel-house. “Will some other gentleman kindly step up?” asked the Amateur Hypnotist. The scramble that followed made the rush-hour at the Brooklyn Bridge look like a chess tournament. In the jam the Professor’s shoulder was dislocated, putting him out of business.
2 A. M.—Hennessy Martel has tied a string around his thumb to [108] ]remind himself to take a drink the minute he gets off the Wagon.
Here endeth the fifth day of the cruise.
“THE DARKEST HOUR”[109] ]
When a gentleman is deposited on his door-mat by a friendly copper, like a cake of ice or a jar of milk, his sense of humour is wonderfully acute. To tip over an aquarium of goldfish on his way through the hall strikes him as the height of the ridiculous, and the flopping of the little fishes and turtles on the Persian rug throws him into spasms of stifled mirth. He chuckles himself into hiccoughs over his vain attempts to unlace his shoes while lying on his back, and his progress up-stairs on all fours is [110] ]accompanied by joyous giggles. When he loses his equilibrium and rolls back down-stairs, he sits up and says: “God pity the men at sea on a night like this!”
He is now serious. He turns on all the electric lights and remarks, censoriously: “Here it is broad daylight, the front stoop unswept, and not a soul in the house up.” In this spirit of criticism he ascends to his wife’s room, and, as she raises her head from the pillow for one comprehensive glance, he says, sternly: “Things are going from bad to worse in this house.”
To her icy rejoinder, “Is that any reason why you should come home in this condition?” he replies, with unruffled importance: “The kitchen fire is out; the canary hasn’t [111] ]been fed; the piano isn’t dusted; and look at this!” He holds up a ravelling. “Found it right in the middle of the hall! What kind of housekeeping do you call that? Why, if I tried to run my business that way, we’d all be in the poor-house.”
Softly and soothingly his spouse returns: “Frank, if you’ll lay the two goldfish on the bureau and come to bed, we’ll have a long talk about it in the morning.”