The man back there in the steamship office can no more truthfully say: “There has never been an accident on this line.”
I awoke at three-thirty this morning to find the cabin insufferably hot and opened the porthole which is directly above my berth. The majority of the ocean immediately left its usual haunts and came indoors. Yale and Harvard were given a shower bath and I had a choice of putting on the driest things I could find and going on deck or drowning where I lay. The former seemed the preferable course.
Out there I found several fellow voyagers asleep in their chairs and a watchman in a red-and-white tam-o’-shanter scanning the bounding main for old Hans W. Periscope.
I wanted sympathy, but the watchman informed me that he ne comprended pas anglais, monsieur. So we stood there together and scanned, each in his own language.
My garçon de cabine promises he will have me thoroughly bailed out by bedtime tonight.
I sat at a different breakfast table, but there was no want of entertainment. At my side was a master of both anglais and français, and opposite him an American young lady who thinks French is simply just impossible to learn.
“Mademoiselle,” says he, “must find it difficult to get what she likes to eat.”
“I certainly do,” says she. “I don’t understand a word of what’s on the menu card.”
“Perhaps I can help mademoiselle,” says he. “Would she like perhaps a grapefruit?”
She would and she’d also like oatmeal and eggs and coffee. So he steered her straight through the meal with almost painful politeness, but in the intervals when he wasn’t using his hands as an aid to gallant discourse, he was manicuring himself with a fork.
This afternoon they drug me into a bridge game. My partner was our congressman’s secretary. Our opponents were a Standard Oil official and a vice-consul bound for Italy. My partner’s middle name was Bid and Mr. Oil’s was Double. And I was too shy to object when they said we’d play for a cent a point.
At the hour of going to press, Standard Oil had practically all the money in the world. And my partner has learned that a holding of five clubs doesn’t demand a bid of the same amount.
Sunday, August 12.
The boat seems to be well supplied with the necessities of life, such as cocktails and cards and chips, but it is next to impossible to obtain luxuries like matches, ice-water and soap.
Yale and Harvard both knew enough to bring their own soap, but my previous ocean experiences were mostly with the Old Fall River Line, on which there wasn’t time to wash. Neither Yale nor Harvard ever takes a hint. And “Apportez-moi du savon, s’il vous plaît,” to the cabin steward is just as ineffectual.
All good people attended service this morning, and some bad ones played poker this afternoon.
In a burst of generosity I invited a second-class French young lady of five summers to have some candy. She accepted, and her acceptance led to the discovery that the ship’s barber is also its candy salesman.
This barber understands not a syllable of English, which fact has added much to young America’s enjoyment. The boys, in the midst of a hair cut, say to him politely: “You realize that you’re a damn rotten barber?” And he answers smilingly: “Oui, oui, monsieur.” Yesterday, I am told, a young shavee remarked: “You make me sick.” The barber replied as usual, and the customer was sick all last night.
Tomorrow afternoon there is to be a “concert” and I’m to speak a piece, O Diary!
Monday, August 13.
The concert was “au profit du Secours National de France. Œuvre fondée pour répartir les Secours aux Victimes de la Guerre.”
Ten minutes before starting time they informed me that I was to talk on “The American National Game,” and I don’t even know how the White Sox came out a week ago tomorrow.
The afternoon’s entertainment opened with a few well-chosen remarks by our congressman. The general, designated on the program as “chairman,” though his real job was toastmaster, talked a while about this, that and the other thing, and then introduced the cornet player, using his real name. This gentleman and I blew at the same time, so I have no idea what he played. I got back in time for some pretty good harmonizing by three young Americans and a boy from Cincinnati. Then there was a Humorous Recitation (the program said so) by a gent with a funny name, and some really delightful French folk songs by the lady novelist. After which came a Humorous Speech (the program forgot to say so) by myself, necessarily brief, as I gave it in French. The French songbird followed with one of those things that jump back and forth between Pike’s Peak and the Grand Canyon, and a brave boy played a ukelele, and the quartette repeated. In conclusion, we all rose and attempted “La Marseillaise.”
Some of the programs had been illustrated by the lady novelist’s artist husband, and these were auctioned off after the show. I made my financial contribution indirectly, through better card players than myself. My bridge partner, I noticed, had recovered from his attack of the Bids.
Tuesday, August 14.
The concert, by the way, was given in the salon de conversation, which, I think, should be reserved for the Gentleman from Louisiana. He has now told me two hundred times that he won his election to the State Senate by giving one dollar and a half to “a nigger.”
One of our young field-service men spoiled the forenoon poker game with a lecture on how to catch sharks. His remarkable idea is to put beefsteak on a stout copper wire and troll with it. He has evidently been very intimate with this family of fish, and he says they are simply crazy about beefsteak.
