—R. L. Stevenson.
The best holiday for an over-worked man, who has little time to spare, and who has not given "hostages to fortune," is to sail across the herring-pond on a Cunarder or White Star hotel, and so get free from newspapers, letters, visitors, dinner-parties, and all the daily irritations of modern life.
Those grand Atlantic rollers fill the veins with new life, the tired brain with fresh ideas; and the happy, idle days slip away all too soon, after which a short stay in New York or Boston City, and then back again.
The study of character on board is always pleasant and instructive, and sometimes a happy friendship is begun which lasts beyond the voyage.
Then, again, the cliques into which the passengers so naturally fall, is funny to watch. The reading set, who early and late occupy the best placed chairs, and wade through a vast mass of miscellaneous literature, and are only roused therefrom by the ringing summons to meals; then there is the betting and gambling set, who fill card and smoking room as long as the rules permit, coming to the surface now and then for breath, and to see what the day's run has been, or to organise fresh sweepstakes; then there is often an evangelical set, who gather in a ring upon the deck, if permitted, and sing hymns, and address in fervid tones the sinners around them; then there are the gossips (most pleasant folk these), the flirts, the deck pedestrians, those who dress three times a day, and those who dress hardly at all: and so the drama of a little world is played before a very appreciative little audience.
I remember on such a journey being greatly interested in the study of a delightful rugged old Scotch engineer, whose friendship I obtained by a genuine admiration for his devotion to his engines, and his belief in their personality. It was his habit in the evening, after a long day's run, to sit alongside these throbbing monsters and play his violin to them, upon which he was a very fair performer, saying, "They deserved cheering up a bit after such a hard day's work!" This was a real and serious sentiment on his part, and inspired respect and an amused admiration on ours.
The humours of one particular voyage which I have in my memory, were delightfully intensified by the presence on board of a very charming American child, called Flossie L——, about fourteen years old, who by her capital repartees, acute observation, and pretty face, kept her particular set of friends very much alive, and made all who knew her, her devoted slaves and admirers.
Her remark upon a preternaturally grave person, who marched the deck each day before our chairs, "that she guessed he had a lot of laughter coiled up in him somewhere," proved, before the voyage was over, to be quite true.