I, who have never bet on anything in my life, even bet with my traveling companion, when the rolling of the ship sends our portmanteaus from one side of the cabin to the other, that mine will arrive first. Intellectual faculties on board are reduced to this ebb.
The nearest approach to a gay note, in this concert of groans and grumblings, is struck by some humorous and good-tempered American. He will come and ask you the most impossible questions with an ease and impudence perfectly inimitable. These catechisings are all the more droll because they are done with a _naïveté_ which completely disarms you. The phrase is short, without verb, reduced to its most concise expression. The intonation alone marks the interrogation. Here is a specimen.
We have on board the _Celtic_ an American who is not a very shrewd person, for it has actually taken him five days to discover that English is not my native tongue. This morning (December 30) he found it out, and, being seated near me in the smoke-room, has just had the following bit of conversation with me:
"Foreigner," said I, replying in American.
"Rather impertinent, your smoke-room neighbor!" you will say.
Undeceive yourself at once upon that point. It is not impertinence, still less an intention to offend you, that urges him to put these incongruous questions to you. It is the interest he takes in you. The American is a good fellow; good fellowship is one of his chief characteristic traits. Of that I became perfectly convinced during my last visit to the United States.
ARRIVAL OF THE PILOT--FIRST LOOK AT AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS.
We shall arrive in New York Harbor to-night, but too late to go on shore. After sunset, the Custom House officers are not to be disturbed. We are about to land in a country where, as I remember, everything is in subjection to the paid servant. In the United States, he who is paid wages commands.
We make the best of it. After having mercilessly tumbled us about for nine days, the wind has graciously calmed down, and our last day is going to be a good one, thanks be. There is a pure atmosphere. A clear line at the horizon divides space into two immensities, two sheets of blue sharply defined.
Faces are smoothing out a bit. People talk, are becoming, in fact, quite communicative. One seems to say to another: "Why, after all, you don't look half as disagreeable as I thought. If I had only known that, we might have seen more of each other, and killed time more quickly."