DEATH TO RICH!
BLOW UP U.S.!
Due to the strain of untoward events, more than one passenger sought solace and reassurance from the problem-counselor, the ship’s distinguished doctor.
“Doctor, what in the name of God is going on here!” the frenzied passenger would demand.
The doctor would answer with a quizzical smile, arching his brows, only mildly censorious. “Fair-weather sailor?” he would gently chide, “... hmm? Cross and irritable the moment things aren’t going exactly to suit you? Now just what seems to be the trouble?”
“‘Trouble’!?!” exclaimed the outraged passenger. “Good Lord, Doctor, surely you don’t think my complaint is an ... an unreasonable one?”
The doctor would turn his gaze out to sea, thin fingers pressed beneath his chin in a delicate pyramid of contemplation, wistfully abstract for a moment before turning back to address the patient frankly.
“Deep-rooted and unreasonable fears,” he would begin in a grand, rich voice, “are most often behind our anxieties ...” and he would continue in this vein until the passenger fairly exploded with impatience.
“Great Scott, Doctor! I didn’t come here for a lecture on psychology—I came to find out what in the name of Heaven is going on aboard this ship!”
In the face of these outbursts however, the doctor almost invariably retained his calm, regarding the patient coolly, searchingly, making a few careful notes on his pad.
“Now, you say that ‘the life jacket over inflated,’ and that you were ‘stuck in the corridor’—that was your expression, I believe, ‘stuck in the corridor’—and at that moment you felt a certain malaise, so to speak. Now, let me ask you this....” Or again, on other occasions, he might behave eccentrically, his head craned far to one side, regarding the patient out of the corners of his eyes, a sly, mad smile on his lips which moved in an inaudible whisper, almost a hiss.