The shirt-front bulged; the watery blue eyes looked up and down the table for attention, then:
"That so?" with a patronising air of feigned surprise. "I've been over thirty-four times!"
"Ever been in Omaha?" returned the lawyer blandly.
"Why—no."
"That so?" replied the lawyer, with fine mimetic quality. "I go there every week!"
Oh, Innocents, as you set out on your first trip abroad, don't let yourself be bullied by the boastful! Call the steward a waiter, call the port-hole a window, call the promenade deck the front porch, but call oh, call the transatlantic bully down! Be ready for him the instant he bawls that he's a member of the Travellers' Club. For the rest, be the ingenuous traveller, if you like. Be the man who has a mania for sitting at the captain's table, the man who goes abroad to get a lot of labels on his suit-case, the man who buys a set on Broadway (for two dollars) and sticks them on at home, the man who howls when bands play "Dixie," the man who wears the Stars and Stripes upon his hat, the man who gambles with the racy-looking stranger underneath the warning smoke-room sign (and stops payment on the cheque by cable), be personally conducted, be anything you like; but if you ever get to patronising people who are sea-sick, if you ever get to being proud of having crossed the ocean oftener than little Kansas City lawyers, do this:
Wait until the ship is settled for the night, go out on the dark deck, step over to the rail, and place the left hand lightly but firmly upon it. Then give an upward and outward jump, raising the feet and legs to the right, in such manner as to permit them to pass freely over the obstruction. When they are well over, remove the left hand from the rail. This is called vaulting. The water may be cold, but you won't mind it very long. And one word more: Don't gurgle; somebody might hear you and stupidly spoil all by crying out, "Man overboard!"
If you decide to "end it all"—which, I believe, is the expression adopted by the best authorities—there is one humane suggestion I would make. End it before the ship's concert. There's absolutely no use in just living on and saying you won't go to the concert, for that is just what everybody else says, yet everybody always goes. There is a horrible fascination about a ship's concert, something hypnotic that draws you, very much against your word and will. I always think of it as a sort of awful antidote that is given to the passengers to counteract the poison of the steady boredom of the ship. It is an event in the voyage, just as the appendicitis operation is an event in life. And as the only people who enjoy the appendicitis operation are the doctors, the only people who go gaily to the concert are those who go there to perform.
The chairman, for instance, enjoys it very much. He is a peer, a member of Parliament, or the United States consul at Shepherd's Bush, and he begins his speech by stating that the proceeds of the entertainment will be equally divided between the Seamen's Funds of New York and Liverpool, or somewhere else. It is then necessary to explain what seamen are. They are "these brave, watchful fellows who have our lives in their hands." At this, the chairman looks at the table stewards, who stand about the walls with their napkins and their middle-class grins; brave, watchful fellows trying to look as if they really held our lives and not our dinners in their hands.