THE LOVERS AND THE PILOT.
The intercourse between the passengers was not pleasant. We got tired of each other. The fact that none of us could get on or off, gave us a sort of feeling that we were prisoners; or, when locked up at night in our berths, that we were animals traveling in the same menagerie; brought together by chance, and held together through necessity.
There was one couple on board that won my attention. It was a man, full-grown, handsome and accomplished, but with the deep furrows in his brow that always come after a man has wrestled with the world; and the girl not more than fifteen years of age. The girl had not worn off the subtle bloom of childhood that gave her grace and glow, as the dew-chrism of early dawn graces the lily. She was not beautiful, after the approved models, but there was an elastic freshness, a bright charm that would have put beauty to the blush. She was brimming with the splendid and tender divinity that fills the odorous buds just before they burst into life’s beauty. She was full of spring. She carried its balms about with her, its aroma hung about her skirts, and its auroral light illuminated her very being. She was April, with all its joys and all its happy tears—its dear restlessness, and its thrills. I marveled to see how the man of affairs loved her. It annoyed me to see how this man, with all his vast concerns, his rugged schemes, his vaulting ambition, bowed down at the feet of a child. It was a very miracle of love that centered all the impulses, aspirations, hopes, and endeavors of this man of the world in a bright slip of a girl. She understood her power, too; and taking the reins of affairs in her little fingers, carried herself with a pretty imperiousness. Not always was she mistress, though. Once in awhile I noticed, when he held her beneath his words, her eyes softened and fell, and she sat half absorbed and trembling, thrilling under an ecstasy that stirred her soul to its very depths, and yet left her unconscious of what it meant or from what it came. I watched this couple with a strange interest, and my heart went out to the child. But beyond this there was nothing interesting on shipboard. The people were all tame. They seemed to have been planted on the ship, and grown there. They were all indigenous; and hence, when the pilot—a breezy fellow, by the way—jumped on board just outside of New York, he brought with him the charm of a rare exotic, and actually acquired a sort of game flavor, by being a stranger.
SOME CONCLUSIONS NOT JUMPED AT.
Altogether, a trip on the ocean is a very great bore. It does not compare to the cozy and bustling comforts of an inland trip, especially if one have the benefits of a Pullman.
The ocean is meant to be looked at and enjoyed—from the shore, or through books. You may see more of it by going on board a ship. It is pretty apt to see more of you, though, than you do of it. There are many moments during the first day or two, when, leaning over the taffrail, you yawp into its face, that it can see clear through to your boots. That’s the way it was with
John, Jr.
TWO MEN WHO HAVE THRILLED THE STATE.
AN ACCIDENTAL MEETING ON THE STREET, IN WHICH TWO GREAT MEN ARE RECOGNIZED AS THE TYPES OF TWO CLASHING THEORIES—TOOMBS’S SUCCESSES—BROWN’S JUDGMENT.