A clergyman was on board a steamer which was caught in a severe gale. The rolling was constant and seemed to get worse as time went on. At last the good man got thoroughly frightened. He believed they were destined for a watery grave, so he went to the captain and asked if he might have prayers. The captain took him by the arm and led him to the forecastle, where the tars were singing and swearing. “There,” said he, “when you hear the men swearing you may know there is no danger.” The clergyman went back feeling better, but still the storm increased and his alarm also. Disconsolate, he managed to stagger to the forecastle again, where he heard the sailors swearing as hard as ever. “Mary,” he said to his sympathetic wife as he crawled back to his berth, “Mary, thank God, they’re swearing yet.”
“Hawaiian servants,” said a woman with some experience of them, “are the best in the world, but they are strangely unsophisticated, strangely naive. They insist on calling you by your first name. Ours were always saying to my husband, ‘Yes, John,’ or ‘all right, John,’ and to me ‘very well, Ann,’ or ‘Ann, I am going out.’ At last I got tired of this and to John, when we got a new cook, I said: Don’t ever call me by my first name in the cook’s presence. Then, perhaps, not knowing my name, he’ll have to say ‘Mrs.’ to me. So John was careful to address me as ‘dearie,’ or ‘sweetheart,’ the watchful chap gave me no title at all. One day we had some English officers to dine. I told them how I had overcome, in my new cook’s case, the native servants’ abuse of their employer’s Christian names, and I said, By this servant, at least, you won’t hear me called ‘Ann.’” Just then the new cook entered the room. He bowed to me respectfully and said:
“‘Sweetheart, dinner is served!’
“‘What?’ I stammered.
“‘Dinner is served, dearie!’ answered the cook.”
Early one morning, on the second day out, a terribly seasick passenger, pale and hollow-eyed, came out of his stateroom and ran into a lady, who was coming along the passageway, clad in the scantiest raiment. She screamed and started to run. “Don’t be alarmed,” groaned the man. “Don’t be alarmed, madam; I shall never live to tell it.”