Among the passengers was a young man from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, named Tibbitts. He was an excellent young man, of his kind, and he very soon acquired the reputation, which he deserved, of being the very best poker player on the ship. He was uneasy till a game was organized in the morning, and he growled ferociously when the lights were turned down at twelve at night. He was impatient with slow players, because, as he said, all the time they wasted was so much loss to him. He could drink more Scotch whisky than any one on the ship, and he was the pet of the entire crew, for his hand was always in his pocket. He ruined the rest of the passengers by his reckless liberality. His father was a rich Wisconsin farmer, and this was his first experience in travel.
What time he could spare from poker and his meals, was devoted to writing a letter to his mother, for whom the scape-grace did seem to have a great deal of respect and a very considerable amount of love. His letter was finished the day before we made Queenstown, so that he could mail it from there. He read it to me. The sentences in parenthesis were his comments:—
On Board the City of Richmond, }
near Queenstown, May 23, 1881. }
Dear Mother:—While there is everything to interest one from the interior in a sea voyage, I confess that I have not enjoyed the passage at all. I have no heart for it for my mind is perpetually on you and my home in the far West. (You see it will please the old lady to know I am thinking of her all the time. Didn’t I scoop in that jack pot nicely last evening? Hadn’t a thing in my hand, and Filkins actually opened it with three deuces.) The ship is one of the strongest and best on the ocean, and is commanded and manned by the best sailors on the sea. The passengers are all good, serious people, with perhaps one exception. There is one young man from New York of dissolute habits, who has a bottle of whisky in his room, and who actually tried to tempt me to play cards with him. But he is known and avoided by the entire company.
We have regular services in the grand saloon, every morning, and occasional meetings for vocal exercises and conversation at other hours. I have just come from one, at which—
“You are not going to send this infernal aggregation of lies to your mother, are you?” I asked.
“Why not? She don’t know any better, and it will make her feel good. I have my opinion of a man who won’t give his old mother a pleasure when he can just as well as not. I will, you bet?”
“But such atrocious lies!”
TIBBITTS’ LETTER.
“I’ll chance that. I can stand lies of that kind when they are told in so good a cause. I love my mother, I do. Let’s see, where was I? Oh yes.”