“No, our steam-ship; the screw boilers are not working well; we cannot get enough pressure.”
“You are anxious, then, to get to New York?”
“Not in the least, I speak as an engineer, that is all. I am very comfortable here, and shall sincerely regret leaving this collection of originals which chance has thrown together ... for my recreation.”
“Originals!” cried I, looking at the passengers who crowded the saloon; “but all those people are very much alike.”
“Nonsense!” exclaimed the Doctor, “one can see you have hardly looked at them, the species is the same, I allow, but in that species what a variety there is! Just notice that group of men down there, with their easy-going air, their legs stretched on the sofas, and hats screwed down on their heads. They are Yankees, pure Yankees, from the small states of Maine, Vermont, and Connecticut, the produce of New England. Energetic and intelligent men, rather too much influenced by ‘the Reverends,’ and who have the disagreeable fault of never putting their hands before their mouths when they sneeze. Ah! my dear sir, they are true Saxons, always keenly alive to a bargain; put two Yankees in a room together, and in an hour they will each have gained ten dollars from the other.”
“I will not ask how,” replied I, smiling at the Doctor, “but among them I see a little man with a consequential air, looking like a weather-cock, and dressed in a long overcoat, with rather short black trousers,—who is that gentleman?”
“He is a Protestant minister, a man of ‘importance’ in Massachusetts, where he is going to join his wife, an ex-governess advantageously implicated in a celebrated lawsuit.”
“And that tall, gloomy-looking fellow, who seems to be absorbed in calculation?”
“That man calculates: in fact,” said the Doctor, “he is for ever calculating.”
“Problems?”