Essays; Stevenson, Robert Louis, 1850-1894 -- Travel
the comparatively elegant form of spare patties or rissoles; but as a
general thing mere chicken-bones and flakes of fish, neither hot nor
cold. If these were not the scrapings of plates their looks belied them
sorely; yet we were all too hungry to be proud, and fell to these
leavings greedily. These, the bread, which was excellent, and the soup
and porridge which were both good, formed my whole diet throughout the
voyage; so that except for the broken meat and the convenience of a table
I might as well have been in the steerage outright. Had they given me
porridge again in the evening, I should have been perfectly contented
with the fare. As it was, with a few biscuits and some whisky and water
before turning in, I kept my body going and my spirits up to the mark.
The last particular in which the second cabin passenger remarkably stands
ahead of his brother of the steerage is one altogether of sentiment. In
the steerage there are males and females; in the second cabin ladies and
gentlemen. For some time after I came aboard I thought I was only a
male; but in the course of a voyage of discovery between decks, I came on
a brass plate, and learned that I was still a gentleman. Nobody knew it,
of course. I was lost in the crowd of males and females, and rigorously
confined to the same quarter of the deck. Who could tell whether I
housed on the port or starboard side of steerage No. 2 and 3? And it was
only there that my superiority became practical; everywhere else I was
incognito, moving among my inferiors with simplicity, not so much as a
swagger to indicate that I was a gentleman after all, and had broken meat
to tea. Still, I was like one with a patent of nobility in a drawer at
home; and when I felt out of spirits I could go down and refresh myself
with a look of that brass plate.
For all these advantages I paid but two guineas. Six guineas is the
steerage fare; eight that by the second cabin; and when you remember that
the steerage passenger must supply bedding and dishes, and, in five cases
out of ten, either brings some dainties with him, or privately pays the
steward for extra rations, the difference in price becomes almost
nominal. Air comparatively fit to breathe, food comparatively varied,
and the satisfaction of being still privately a gentleman, may thus be
had almost for the asking. Two of my fellow-passengers in the second
cabin had already made the passage by the cheaper fare, and declared it
was an experiment not to be repeated. As I go on to tell about my
steerage friends, the reader will perceive that they were not alone in
their opinion. Out of ten with whom I was more or less intimate, I am
sure not fewer than five vowed, if they returned, to travel second cabin;
and all who had left their wives behind them assured me they would go
without the comfort of their presence until they could afford to bring
them by saloon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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