The incident described by Charles Matthews on one of the Sound steamers, would have created a first-class sensation here: “Will you have the goodness to pass the salt?” said the English comedian to a Bowery boy, who was shovelling meat and potatoes down his throat with the speed of the most effective kind of dredging machine. “Salt by yer,” said the patriot, without deigning to do more than raise his eyes, and continuing his feeding without so much as an instant’s interruption. “O, I beg your pardon,” said Matthews, looking down and espying the saltcellar close to his plate, “I did’nt see it.”
“Who the ——— said you did?” was the gruff reply. “I said ‘salt by yer.’”
On board the Franz Josef, I had intended to take a private cabin, but when I learned the price of it I changed my mind. The price of passage was eighteen florins (a florin is equal to fifty cents of our money); a private cabin costs twenty-three florins, so that the whole bill would have been forty-one florins! I didn’t relish paying eleven dollars and a half for privacy when there was a good, comfortable berth at my disposal for nothing. The sleeping cabin is under the main saloon, and is divided into cabins holding four persons each—that is if a green curtain let down in front can be called a division. I saw there were many advantages in sleeping there that you would not have in a private cabin.
You could have, for instance, a sample of the snoring of each of the nationalities on board, a thing you do not get every day; if one of the number should happen to indulge in delirium tremens or fits you could see the effect on him without any extra charge.
So I kept my twenty-three florins, and by paying a few kreutzers to one of the servants, our party of three managed to get a cabin all to ourselves. The extra berth we used for stowage purposes, and very convenient we found it. We took our tea and retired early, as we expected to be in Belgrade by daybreak.
And such snoring! I had been told that the English and Americans are the only people who indulge in this amusement, but I found that my information was incorrect. Of those who slept in that cabin at least half did themselves credit by the extent and originality of their nasal music. There was one fat old Russian who struck a chromatic scale with the regularity and accuracy of a country singing-school. He would start with a light snort, then run up to the eighth note, which would be a cross between the report of a rifle and the murmur of a brook under the ice, and then he came down the eight-rounded ladder to a sound exactly like his preliminary snort.