If these were not the
scrapings of plates their looks belied them sorely; yet we were all
too hungry to be proud, and fell to these leavings greedily. These,
the bread, which was excellent, and the soup and porridge which were
both good, formed my whole diet throughout the voyage; so that except
for the broken meat and the convenience of a table I might as well
have been in the steerage outright. Had they given me porridge again
in the evening, I should have been perfectly contented with the fare.
As it was, with a few biscuits and some whisky and water before
turning in, I kept my body going and my spirits up to the mark.
The last particular in which the second cabin passenger remarkably
stands ahead of his brother of the steerage is one altogether of
sentiment. In the steerage there are males and females; in the
second cabin ladies and gentlemen. For some time after I came aboard
I thought I was only a male; but in the course of a voyage of
discovery between decks, I came on a brass plate, and learned that I
was still a gentleman. Nobody knew it, of course. I was lost in the
crowd of males and females, and rigorously confined to the same
quarter of the deck.
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