The Ship-Dwellers: A Story of a Happy CruisePaine, Albert Bigelow
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The Ship-Dwellers: A Story of a Happy Cruise
Paine, Albert Bigelow
Middle East -- Description and travel
However, they seemed to have overlooked this ship. There is only one
love-affair discoverable, and even that is of such a mild academic
variety that it is doubtful whether that tricksy jade Venus and her
dimpled son had any concern in the matter. It is rather a case of
Diana's hunting, I suspect, and not a love-affair at all.
I have mentioned that this is Sunday, but I acquired this knowledge
from the calendar. One would never guess it from the aspect of this ship
and its company. We made a pretty good attempt at Sabbath observance the
first Sunday out, and we did something in that line a week later. But
then we struck Genoa, where we lost the Promoter and took on this
European influx of languages, and now Sunday is the same as Friday or
Tuesday or any other day, and it would take an expert to tell the
difference.
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."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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