“Well, it’s this way,” he answered. “We become so accustomed to the zigzag course that zigzagging becomes a habit, and we find it hard to keep straight.”
“Yes,” I said, “and the engineers are acquiring the zigzag habit, too.”
As I did not bring in Chicago he didn’t see any joke.
CHAPTER III
At Sea
The Weather—Packing the Stomach—A Diatribe on Cooks and Cooking—Uncooked Food as a Diet—Survival of the Fittest—New England Diet—First Impressions and Facts—The Passengers—The Englishman—A Phantom Laugh—The Stewardess—Beef Tea—A Recreation Famine—The Universal Enjoyment—An Old English Table d’Hôte—White Ducks and Rain—Highballs and High Life—Bad Effects of Water—A Temperate Captain and Crew—Scenery and Poetry—How People Get What They Want—The Southern Cross and Others—Advice.
From Diary.
Tuesday, December 20th.—Smooth sea. Weather cool but pleasant. The temperature at New Orleans was about twenty degrees Fahrenheit warmer than at Chicago, and this afternoon is nearly ten degrees warmer than it was at New Orleans yesterday. We are headed almost due south and expect soon to breathe the balmy air of the Caribbean Sea. It is so far a pleasant winter experience to wake up each morning and find the air about ten degrees warmer than on the day before.
What a change from busy Chicago life it is to have nothing to do all day long but read novels and talk small talk, and linger leisurely over one’s meals with strangers gathered together from various parts of Anglo-Saxondom. We lingered over the food to-day until we had eaten enough for two dinners. It was not that we felt the need of a double dinner, but largely out of a subconscious imitation of each other. When among eaters do as eaters do, is the philosophy of it. There is no place where people enjoy and understand the packing and filling up of their adjustable and dilatable stomachs better than on shipboard. When they pack their trunks and bags they do not overload them, for they know that there is danger of straining or bursting them, and they do not wet and soak things down in their trunks in order to make them pack tighter, as they do in their stomachs. They know that the stomach, which was not made by hands, will not burst.
But eating can not unfortunately be made to fill in the whole of our time, even on shipboard and with saltwater appetites. If we had four stomachs, like a cow, and could devote all of our time either to eating, or the chewing of cuds, how simple life would become for many of us. Idle men would be kept from mischief and idle women from worry. Our enjoyment would be simple and continual, sanitary and convivial. However, our mode of living and the economy of our functions are such that we can not utilize much bulky nourishment, as do our bovine models, whose heads and limbs are mere appendages to their stomachs; and our methods of preparing food are such that we do not have to do the work with our teeth. We thus lose much of the benefit as well as harmless pleasure that animals derive from the preparation of their own meals. Our lips are shrinking and our jaws degenerating for want of work.