Europe Revised

by Irvin S. Cobb

The leisurely, long, slantwise course across the Atlantic gives one time, also, for making the acquaintance of one's fellow passengers and for wondering why some of them ever went to Europe anyway. A source of constant speculation along these lines was the retired hay-and-feed merchant from Michigan who traveled with us. One gathered that he had done little else in these latter years of his life except to traipse back and forth between the two continents. What particularly endeared him to the rest of us was his lovely habit of pronouncing all words of all languages according to a fonetic system of his own. "Yes, sir," you would hear him say, addressing a smoking-room audience of less experienced travelers, "my idee is that a fellow ought to go over on an English ship, if he likes the exclusability, and come back on a German ship if he likes the sociableness. Take my case. The last trip I made I come over on the Lucy Tanner and went back agin on the Grocer K. First and enjoyed it both ways immense!"

Nor would this chronicle be complete without a passing reference to the lady from Cincinnati, a widow of independent means, who was traveling with her two daughters and was so often mistaken for their sister that she could not refrain from mentioning the remarkable circumstance to you, providing you did not win her everlasting regard by mentioning it first. Likewise I feel that I owe the tribute of a line to the elderly Britain who was engaged in a constant and highly successful demonstration of the fallacy of the claim set up by medical practitioners, to the effect that the human stomach can contain but one fluid pint at a time. All day long, with his monocle goggling glassily from the midst of his face, like one lone porthole in a tank steamer, he disproved this statement by practical methods and promptly at nine every evening, when his complexion had acquired a rich magenta tint, he would be carried below by two accommodating stewards and put—no, not put, decanted—would be decanted gently into bed. If anything had happened to the port-light of that ship, we could have stationed him forward in the bows with his face looming over the rail and been well within the maritime regulations—his face had a brilliancy which even the darkness of the night could not dim; and if the other light had gone out of commission, we could have impressed the aid of the bilious Armenian lady who was sick every minute and very sick for some minutes, for she was always of a glassy green color.

We learned to wait regularly for the ceremony of seeing Sir Monocle and his load toted off to bed at nine o'clock every night, just as we learned to linger in the offing and watch the nimble knife-work when the prize invalid of the ship's roster had cornered a fresh victim. The prize invalid, it is hardly worth while to state, was of the opposite sex. So many things ailed her—by her own confession—that you wondered how they all found room on the premises at the same time. Her favorite evening employment was to engage another woman in conversation—preferably another invalid—and by honeyed words and congenial confidences, to lead the unsuspecting prey on and on, until she had her trapped, and then to turn on her suddenly and ridicule the other woman's puny symptoms and tell her she didn't even know the rudiments of being ill and snap her up sharply when she tried to answer back. And then she would deliver a final sting and go away without waiting to bury her dead. The poison was in the postscript—it nearly always is with that type of female. But afterward she would justify herself by saying people must excuse her manner—she didn't mean anything by it; it was just her way, and they must remember that she suffered constantly. Some day when I have time, I shall make that lady the topic of a popular song. I have already fabricated the refrain: Her heart was in the right place, lads, but she had a floating kidney!

Arrives a day when you develop a growing distaste for the company of your kind, or in fact, any kind. 'Tis a day when the sea, grown frisky, kicks up its nimble heels and tosses its frothy mane. A cigar tastes wrong then and the mere sight of so many meat pies and so many German salads at the entrance to the dining salon gives one acute displeasure. By these signs you know that you are on the verge of being taken down with climate fever, which, as I set forth many pages agone, is a malady peculiar to the watery deep, and by green travelers is frequently mistaken for seasickness, which indeed it does resemble in certain respects. I may say that I had one touch of climate fever going over and a succession of touches coming back.

At such a time, the companionship of others palls on one. It is well then to retire to the privacy of one's stateroom and recline awhile. I did a good deal of reclining, coming back; I was not exactly happy while reclining, but I was happier than I would have been doing anything else. Besides, as I reclined there on my cosy bed, a medley of voices would often float in to me through the half-opened port and I could visualize the owners of those voices as they sat ranged in steamer chairs, along the deck. I quote:

"You, Raymund! You get down off that rail this minute." ... "My dear, you just ought to go to mine! He never hesitates a minute about operating, and he has the loveliest manners in the operating room. Wait a minute—I'll write his address down for you. Yes, he is expensive, but very, very thorough." ... "Stew'd, bring me nozher brand' 'n' sozza." ... "Well, now Mr.—excuse me, I didn't catch your name?—oh yes, Mr. Blosser; well, Mr. Blosser, if that isn't the most curious thing! To think of us meeting away out here in the middle of the ocean and both of us knowing Maxie Hockstein in Grand Rapids. It only goes to show one thing—this certainly is a mighty small world." ... "Raymund, did you hear what I said to you!" ... "Do you really think it is becoming? Thank you for saying so. That's what my husband always says. He says that white hair with a youthful face is so attractive, and that's one reason why I've never touched it up. Touched-up hair is so artificial, don't you think?" ... "Wasn't the Bay of Naples just perfectly swell—the water, you know, and the land and the sky and everything, so beautiful and everything?" ... "You Raymund, come away from that lifeboat. Why don't you sit down there and behave yourself and have a nice time watching for whales?" ... "No, ma'am, if you're askin' me I must say I didn't care so much for that art gallery stuff—jest a lot of pictures and statues and junk like that, so far as I noticed. In fact the whole thing—Yurupp itself—was considerable of a disappointment to me. I didn't run acros't a single Knights of Pythias Lodge the whole time and I was over there five months straight hard-runnin'." ... "Really, I think it must be hereditary; it runs in our family. I had an aunt and her hair was snow-white at twenty-one and my grandmother was the same way." ... "Oh yes, the suffering is something terrible. You've had it yourself in a mild form and of course you know. The last time they operated on me, I was on the table an hour and forty minutes—mind you, an hour and forty minutes by the clock—and for three days and nights they didn't know whether I would live another minute."

A crash of glass.

"Stew'd, I ashidently turn' over m' drink—bring me nozher brand' 'n' sozza." ... "Just a minute, Mr. Blosser, I want to tell my husband about it—he'll be awful interested. Say, listen, Poppa, this gentleman here knows Maxie Hockstein out in Grand Rapids." ... "Do you think so, really? A lot of people have said that very same thing to me. They come up to me and say 'I know you must be a Southerner because you have such a true Southern accent.' I suppose I must come by it naturally, for while I was born in New Jersey, my mother was a member of a very old Virginia family and we've always been very strong Southern sympathizers and I went to a finishing school in Baltimore and I was always being mistaken for a Southern girl." ... "Well, I sure had enough of it to do me for one spell. I seen the whole shootin' match and I don't regret what it cost me, but, believe me, little old Keokuk is goin' to look purty good to me when I get back there. Why, them people don't know no more about makin' a cocktail than a rabbit." ... "That's her standing yonder talking to the captain. Yes, that's what so many people say, but as a matter of fact, she's the youngest one of the two. I say, 'These are my daughters,' and then people say, 'You mean your sisters.' Still I married very young—at seventeen—and possibly that helps to explain it." ... "Oh, is that a shark out yonder? Well, anyway, it's a porpoise, and a porpoise is a kind of shark, isn't it? When a porpoise grows up, it gets to be a shark—I read that somewhere. Ain't nature just wonderful?" ... "Raymund Walter Pelham, if I have to speak to you again, young man, I'm going to take you to the stateroom and give you something you won't forget in a hurry." ... "Stew'd, hellup me gellup."

Thus the lazy hours slip by and the spell of the sea takes hold on you and you lose count of the time and can barely muster up the energy to perform the regular noonday task of putting your watch back half an hour. A passenger remarks that this is Thursday and you wonder dimly what happened to Wednesday.

Three days more—just three. The realization comes to you with a joyous shock. Somebody sights a sea-gull. With eager eyes you watch its curving flight. Until this moment you have not been particularly interested in sea-gulls. Heretofore, being a sea-gull seemed to you to have few attractions as a regular career, except that it keeps one out in the open air; otherwise it has struck you as being rather a monotonous life with a sameness as to diet which would grow very tiresome in time. But now you envy that sea-gull, for he comes direct from the shores of the United States of America and if so minded may turn around and beat you to them by a margin of hours and hours and hours. Oh, beauteous creature! Oh, favored bird!