Then, attracted by a crowd on the fore part of the deck, roped off to divide steerage from saloon passengers, I became one of a motley group assisting at a sort of moral “free-and-easy,” got up for the 300 steerage folk by two ecclesiastics, whom I took at first for Romish priests from their costume. I found I was mistaken, and that they were the Principal and a Brother of “the Fraternity of the Iron Cross,” an order of the American Episcopal Church, which, it seems, has taken root in several of the large cities. The Brethren are vowed to “poverty, purity, and temperance” (or obedience, I am not sure which); and these two were crossing in the steerage to comfort and help the poor folk there--no pleasant task, even in so airy a ship and such fine weather. One can imagine what power this kind of fellowship must give the Iron Cross Brethren with their rather sad fellow-passengers, to whom they could say--one of them, indeed, did say it--“We are just as poor as the poorest of you, for we own no property of any kind, and never can own any till our deaths.” This Brother (a strapping young fellow of twenty-five, who I found had been an athlete at Oxford) waxed eloquent to them on his experiences in Philadelphia, especially on the working-men Brethren there. One of these, a big, rough chap, with a badly broken nose, he had rather looked askance at, first, till he found that the broken nose had been earned in a rough-and-tumble fight with a fellow who was ill-using a woman. Now they were the closest friends, and he looked on the broken nose as more honourable than the Victoria Cross, and hoped none of the men there would fail to go in for that decoration if they ever got the same chance. In melancholy contrast to the Iron Cross Brethren were two other diligent workers in quite another kind of business. They haunted the smoking-room from breakfast till “lights out,” officious to help to arrange the daily sweepstakes on the ship’s run; gloating over, and piling caressingly as they rattled down on the table, the dollars and half-crowns; always on the watch and ready to take a hand at cards, just to accommodate gents with whom time hung heavily. Bagmen, they were said to be; but I doubt if they travel for any industry except plucking pigeons on their own account--unmistakable Jews of a low type, who never looked any man in the face:-- In their eyes that stealthy gleam, Was not learned of sky or stream, But it has the hard, cold glint Of new dollars from the mint.