The rules and regulations in many steamboats are exceedingly strict. In some instances they are printed and hung up at the sides of the cabins and elsewhere, in conspicuous places. They relate to the treatment of furniture, the hours of rising, meals, retiring to rest, &c.
No person, for example, is allowed to let his chair, while sitting, rest against the wall, or to put his feet on the cushions of the chairs or sofas. No lights are permitted in the state-rooms—cases of severe sickness or other extremity alone excepted.
The female passengers have every reasonable convenience for washing, dressing, &c., in their state-rooms. For the rest of the passengers there is a common washroom, with which the barber's room is also sometimes connected.
Thus you see that the art and ingenuity of man have converted these great prisons on the water into so many magnificent hotels. Some inconveniences and even privations there are, and must be. As a general rule, the traveler may be very comfortable in them, and, if he chooses, quite self-indulgent.
This word self-indulgent refers to the articles of food on the tables. These are just what is to be expected when it is considered what the far greater part of our travelers place their chief happiness in—what they most think of and talk of, at least when they have little else to do.
In this respect, the steamboat is about on a par with the hotel. If there be any difference, it seems to me to consist in this: that the dishes at the table on board the steamboat are more complicated and more costly, and at the same time more unhealthy, than those of the hotel.
But enough of description, for the present. We will now return to the narration of my adventures.