I do not blame it all to the Europeans. They are a good lot, I believe, some of them I am sure are, and we have taken to them amazingly. They did teach us a few new diversions, but we were ready for instruction and the Reprobates would have corrupted us anyhow, so it is no matter. The new-comers only stimulated our education and added variety to our progress. But they did make it bad for Sunday--the old-fashioned Sunday, such as we had the first week out.
Not that our "pilgrims" are a bad lot--not by any means. They do whoop it up pretty lively in the booze-bazaar now and then, and even a number of our American ladies have developed a weakness for that congenial corner of the ship. But everything is p. p., which is _Kurfürst_ for perfectly proper, and on this particular Sunday you could not scrape up enough real sin on this ship to interest Satan five minutes.
Even the Reprobates are not entirely abandoned, and only three different parties have been removed from their table in the dining-saloon by request--request of the parties, that is--said parties being accustomed to the simpler life--pleasant diversions of the home circle, as it were--and not to the sparkle and the flow of good-fellowship on the high seas, with the _bon mot_ of the Horse-Doctor, the repartee of the Colonel, and the placid expletive of the Apostle which the rest of us are depraved enough to adore.
The Apostle, by-the-way, is going to Jerusalem. He has been there before, which he does not offer as a reason for going again, for he found no comfort there, and he is unable to furnish the Doctor with a sane reason why any one should ever want to go there, even once. I suspect that when the sale of tickets for the side trips began the Apostle, in his innocence, feared that there might not be enough to go around, and thought that he had better secure one in case of accident. I suspect this from his manner of urging the Doctor to secure one for himself.
"You'll be too late, if you're not careful," he said. "You'd better go right up and get your ticket now."
The Doctor was not alarmed. "Don't worry, Joe," he said. "You're booked for Jerusalem, all right enough. I'll get mine when I decide to go."
"But suppose you decide to go after the party is made up?"