We had the sharp-nosed man with us. His delight was to take timid girls, or nervous women, and explain if the slightest thing should get wrong with the machinery how we should be at the mercy of the waves. For instance, if we should lose our propeller what would happen? Or if any one of the boilers should explode, filling the ship with hot steam, scalding the passengers, or if the main shaft should break, in such a sea as we were then having, or if we should run upon an iceberg, or collide with some floating hulk?
“They say all these ships are built with water-tight compartments. Sho! Stave in one part of the ship and it must go down. What happened to the ‘City of Boston?’ Never heard of. ‘City of Paris?’ Lost half her passengers. But we must take our chances if we will travel.”
And this to a lot of people who had never been at sea before, with an ugly wind blowing and a tremendous sea on. Imagine the frame of mind he left his auditors in, and he made it his business, day after day, to regale the very timid ones with harrowing histories of shipwrecks and disasters at sea till their blood would run cold.
Some night this old raven will be lost overboard, but there will be others just like him to take his place. Nature duplicates her monstrosities as well as her good things.
LEMUEL TIBBITTS, FROM NEAR OSHKOSH, WISCONSIN, WRITING A LETTER TO HIS MOTHER.