Nasby in Exile: or, Six Months of Travel in England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium, with many things not of travel — John Locke — John Shaqi
Nasby in Exile: or, Six Months of Travel in England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium, with many things not of travel
John Locke · en
It is astonishing how short remembrance is, and how the knowledge of one
decade is swallowed up in the increasing volume of the next. Every one
of the catches employed by this young man to keep himself in wine and
cigars were well known ten years ago, but totally unknown now except by
the few who use them. The water going up the throat instead of down was
published years ago in a small volume called "Hocus Pocus," and it sold
by the million, but nobody knows of it to-day. I once asked a sharper
who had lived thirty years by the practice of one simple trick, how it
happened that the whole world did not know his little game?
[Illustration: THE BETTING YOUNG MAN FROM CHICAGO.]
"There are new crops of fools coming on every year," was his answer. He
was right. The stock will never run out.
[Sidenote: SEA-SICKNESS.]
There were one hundred and fifty-six saloon passengers on board, but
with the exception of those mentioned, a distressing monotony prevailed
among them. Never was so good a set of people ever gathered together.
They were fearfully good--too good by half.
True goodness is all very well in the abstract, but there is nothing
picturesque about it. It is slightly tame. Your brigand, with short
green jacket and yellow breeches, with blue or green garters, and a tall
hat with a feather in it, is a much more striking being than a Quaker
woman. The wicked is always the startling, and, therefore, taking to the
eye.
On our ship the people were all good. There wasn't a pickpocket, a card
sharper, or anything of the sort to vary the monotony of life. It was a
dead level of goodness, a sort of quiet mill-pond of morality, that to
the lover of excitement was distressing in the extreme. The card parties
were conducted decorously, and the religious services in the grand
saloon were attended by nearly every passenger, and what is more they
all seemed to enjoy it. Possibly it was because religious services were
a novelty to the most of them.
The second day out was a very rough one. The wind freshened--I think
that is the proper phrase--and a tremendously heavy sea was on. The
"City of Richmond" is a very staunch ship, and behaves herself
commendably in bad weather, but there is no ship that can resist the
power of the enormous waves of the North Atlantic. Consequently she
tossed like a cork, and, consequently, there was an amount of suffering
for two days that was amusing to everybody but the sufferers.
Sea-sickness is probably the most distressing of all the maladies that
do not kill. The sickness from first to last is a taste of death. The
resultant vomiting is of a nature totally different from any other
variety of vomiting known. The victim does not vomit--he throws up.
There is a wild legend that one man in a severe fit of sea-sickness
threw up his boots, but it is not credible. It is entirely safe to say,
however, that one throws up everything but original sin, and he gives
that a tolerable trial.