As I go on to tell about my steerage friends, the reader will
perceive that they were not alone in their opinion. Out of ten with
whom I was more or less intimate, I am sure not fewer than five
vowed, if they returned, to travel second cabin; and all who had left
their wives behind them assured me they would go without the comfort
of their presence until they could afford to bring them by saloon.
Our party in the second cabin was not perhaps the most interesting on
board. Perhaps even in the saloon there was as much good-will and
character. Yet it had some elements of curiosity. There was a mixed
group of Swedes, Danes, and Norsemen, one of whom, generally known by
the name of 'Johnny,' in spite of his own protests, greatly diverted
us by his clever, cross-country efforts to speak English, and became
on the strength of that an universal favourite - it takes so little
in this world of shipboard to create a popularity. There was,
besides, a Scots mason, known from his favourite dish as 'Irish
Stew,' three or four nondescript Scots, a fine young Irishman,
O'Reilly, and a pair of young men who deserve a special word of
condemnation.
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