“No, thank you. I don’t want anything that will work. You give us plenty to eat, but you don’t keep it down. Dieting is the best thing for ship food. I was told to diet several years ago, and I wish I’d done it. The opportunity has come now.”
It smiled at me as if I was a spoiled child, and balanced about among the ladies in a way that made my head swim, until finally it disappeared.
In a little while it sent up a cup of beef tea by the shuffling, cross-eyed, colorless, albino-haired, cockney steward. The stuff looked good, however, and I braced up and drank the health of the flower of the English meadows that had blossomed on the beautiful land and now bloomed on the blooming sea, and felt better. The beef tea suffered no harm, and I no longer wished to be thrown overboard. In fact, within two hours afterward I went down to the dining-room and ate leather and doepaste, and drank luke-warm mud-decoction with a favorable termination.
Friday, December 23rd.—We arrive at Port Limón to-morrow morning, and so far no Spanish lessons, no cotillions, no cake-walks, no negro minstrels, no shuffle-board, no music, not even poker or pools on the daily run; nothing doing but the moonlight tête-a-têtes of the United Fruit Company’s clerk from Limón and the lady’s maid from London. He evidently regards her as edible. Watching them with parental interest and sympathetic reminiscence is the only recreation we have had except eating at odd meals when Neptune happened to be napping. Perhaps it is youth rather than opportunity that we lack, for as people grow older they lose the cleverness and skill as well as the illusions necessary for the enjoyment of the recreations of their youth, except in eating. The enjoyment of eating, illusions and all, belongs to all ages and all animals. It constitutes the first evidence of our animal intelligence and the last senile flourish of our physical nature. When all other incentives to enjoyment and hilarity are gone forever, people can laugh and joke over their food like children. Having consumed the spirits of youth they resort to the spirits of wine, and the result is a brilliant flicker.
It is interesting to watch a small party of English people of uncertain age and social station at a Continental table d’hote dinner, as I once had the pleasure of doing:—
At soup a fortified and funereal quiet and, to the young and frivolous table-d’hoters about them, an apparently reproachful demeanor, a social asceticism. Such dignity and decorum as is found only among the English, whose recreations and social functions are formal duties.
Over the fish, occasional premeditated remarks such as courtesy demands, and a solemn sipping of wine at appropriate intervals.
Over the third course, slight relaxation of features and small bits of conversation, interspersed with more frequent and informal sipping of wine.
Over the fourth course, much less modulation of voice and considerable talking, with an occasional easily comprehended joke followed by generous applause. General emptying of bottles and drinking of toasts. A touch of nature makes the whole room grin.
Over dessert, frequent flashing of fire-cracker jokes extinguished in laughter. A leaning over cordiality and unrestrained communicativeness regardless of appearances. An astonishing climax of gayety. The tables are turned. Foreigners grow silent and look on with wonder.