All the comfort there was on hand was to lodge complaints with me and to express the hope that I'd do justice to the situation when I got home.
"Don't forget to tell about the rats, Allen," a man from Maryland piped up.
"Yes, touch up the rats," a man from Iowa admonished me, while a man from Kentucky said he had become so innured to hardship he didn't mind the rats so much, he could stand their running over his face nights, if they would only hurry across.
"Yes," a man from Massachusetts plaintively wailed, "it is hard when they loiter, isn't it?" While a man from Florida said that he didn't mind their feet so much—it was the dragging their tails across his face that got onto his nerves.
"It is hard when they loiter, isn't it?"
"And don't forget to tell how they served us those little, pithy oranges that day, Allen," a man from California broke in.
This was hardly worthy. The man who lodged that complaint ought to have been ashamed of himself, and his ingenuity for finding things to kick about was of a low order—he was straining at a gnat and swallowing camels.
It's true the stewards brought them on in their dirty aprons and pitched them at us—not the stewards' fault, they were doing the best they could with the tools furnished them—but steerage passengers ought to be grateful for any kind of oranges, served in any shape. While it's quite true, in my adolescent years, as a boy on the farm I have fed apples to hogs with the same courtesy, the complaint was too trivial to be spread on the minutes of the meeting. But it was voted to spread it, hence the mention.