[Illustration: AT DINNER IN THE FIRST-CLASS DINING SALOON OF AN ATLANTIC STEAMSHIP DURING A STORM.]
Almost every reader will remember Martin Chuzzlewit and Mark Tapley on board the wretched _Screw_. How, for example, "the latter awoke with a dim idea that he was dreaming of having gone to sleep in a four-post bedstead which had turned bottom upwards in the course of the night," for which there seemed some reason, as "the first objects he recognised when he opened his eyes were his own heels looking down at him, as he afterwards observed, from a nearly perpendicular elevation." "This is the first time as ever I stood on my head all night," observed Mark.
The lesson taught by Dickens regarding the necessity of keeping up one's spirits on board ship, and better, of helping to keep up those of others, as exemplified by poor Tapley, is a very important one. If anything will _test_ character, life on board a crowded ship will do it. Who that has read can ever forget Mark, when he calls to the poor woman to "hand over one of them young 'uns, according to custom." "'I wish you'd get breakfast, Mark, instead of worrying with people who don't belong to you,' observed Martin, petulantly." "'All right,' said Mark; '_she'll_ do that. It's a fair division of labour, sir. I wash her boys and she makes our tea. I never _could_ make tea, but any one can wash a boy.' The woman, who was delicate and ill, felt and understood his kindness--as well she might, for she had been covered every night with his great coat, while he had for his own bed the bare boards and a rug." "If a gleam of sun shone out of the dark sky," continues Dickens, "down Mark tumbled into the cabin, and presently up he came again with a woman in his arms, or half-a-dozen children, or a man, or a bed, or a saucepan, or a basket, or something animate or inanimate that he thought would be the better for the air. If an hour or two of fine weather in the middle of the day tempted those who seldom or never came on deck at other times to crawl into the long-boat, or lie down upon the spare spars and try to eat, there in the centre of the group was Mr. Tapley, handing about salt beef and biscuit, or dispensing tastes of grog, or cutting up the children's provisions with his pocket-knife for their greater ease and comfort, or reading aloud from a venerable newspaper, or singing some roaring old song to a select party, or writing the beginnings of letters to their friends at home for people who couldn't write, or cracking jokes with the crew, or nearly getting blown over the side, or emerging half-drowned from a shower of spray, or lending a hand somewhere or other: but always doing something for the general entertainment."