The young officer went to the door of the galley. The chief steerage cook threw a clean towel over the serving-board that barred it, and on it set clean china dishes, into which the doctor put portions of each sort of food, and ate enough to test the quality. He drank a little of the wine. Every meal thereafter he did the same thing. I had had the opportunity of watching the Italian doctor on the _Lahn_ on the voyage to Italy, and I must say that both men did their work in a most commendable manner. As to the food itself, it was in its quality as good as the average Italian gets at home, but the manner in which it was messed into one heap in the big pan was nothing short of nauseating. Every pound of food and ounce of drink is regulated by Italian law, both as to amount per day and proportion of kind and variety. If there was a failure to live up to the law on the _Lahn_ and _Prinzessin Irene_, it was in the wine and fish. Giovanni Pulejo was chosen _capo di rancio_ of our family group, and Nicola Curro, the little cabinet-maker and trombonist, headed the one in which were Nunzio Giunta, Gaetano Mullura, and the other Gualtieri-Sicamino and Socosa boys, while Giuseppe Rota from Avellino, who had joined us at Naples, headed a third group. The others were divided among groups of other friends. On the occasion of this first meal the emigrants began doing what is the bane of life in the steerage; throwing the refuse from their meal on the deck instead of over the side or into the scuppers. It being the first night out of port, the deck watch was too busy securing derricks, storing mooring-gear, and putting the ship to rights, to scrub the deck with hose and soogey-mougie when supper was over, so that I remember traversing the main deck on the port side about eleven o’clock that night much as I would cross a slippery glacier, for it was covered with a layer of unctuous filth that made footing very uncertain.