I knew enough about the sins of Lizzie, and moved on and took a new stand.
An elderly lumber merchant from Michigan was saying to his companion in a loud voice:
“Yes, I retired ten years ago. I am studying the history of the world—all about the life of the world, especially the life of the ancients.”
I moved on to escape a comparison of the careers of Alexander and Napoleon, and settled down in a dusky corner near which a lady was giving an account of the surgical operations which had been performed upon her. So the conversation, which had begun at daybreak, went on into the night. It was all very human—very American.
The Litchmans of Chicago had rooms opposite ours. Every night six or eight pairs of shoes, each decorated with a colored ribbon to distinguish it from the common run of shoes, were ranged in a row outside their door. The lady had forty-two hats—so I was told—and all of them were neatly aired in the course of the voyage. The upper end of her system was not a head, but a hat-holder.
Their family of four children was established in a room next to ours. As a whole, it was the most harmonious and efficient yelling-machine of which I have any knowledge. Its four cylinders worked like one. At dinner it filled its tanks with cheese and cakes and nuts and jellies and milk, and was thus put into running order for the night. It is wonderful how many yells there are in a relay of cheese and cake and nuts and jelly and milk. When we got in bed the machine cranked up, backed out of the garage, and went shrieking up the hill to midnight and down the slope to breakfast-time, stopping briefly now and then for repairs.
A deaf lady next morning declared that she had heard the fog-whistles blowing all night.
“Fog-whistles! We didn't need 'em,” said Betsey.
It was a symptom of America with which I had been unfamiliar.
We were astonished at the number of manless women aboard that ship. Many were much-traveled widows whose husbands had fallen in the hard battles of American life; some, I doubt not, like the battle of Norris, with hidden worries that feed, like rats, on the strength of a man.