The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1890-07-20

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''Mean spiritn' retorted the daughter
writhing in anger. Georges hog! That's
what he is. shall just order the steward
to pitch them overheard at once. He said
should have the finest on the steamer-the
brute! This settles him. He'll get his
congo at Liverpool. No-rll cable it from
Queenstown
George was evidently betrothed to this
being. He had only sent her $500, instead
of $500, WORTH of flowers: and had proba-
bly, gone back to the Office, at parting, to
cover up the shortage in his accounts
blegram arrives! May be he can retrieve
himself on the books, and sometime learn
| to fervently thank God that he did not in
| vest $500 more of his employers money in
| flowers this sailing day.
Two or three meals at farthest sponge the
| banquet airs from the cabin tables. Fifty
plates will suffice for the second day at
table for breakfast; perhaps no more than
twice that number for luncheon and din
ner. White-gloved table stewards, solemn
as mutes at q funeral, stand idly by for the
hours of the double sittings, steadfastly re-
garding the artistic lights of the gay cabin
dome, or receiving with stately and COM
passionate reserve the humble apologies of
those having sudden engagements in their
state rooms or upon deck. The flowers
have wholly disappeared from the man
tables. and, for courtesy's sake, tarry a lit
oAc AlAc u array VI uCCblC RuOSIS
upon the spare tables in the alcoves, as if
each withered and trembling bud knew its
fate Of being tossed into the sea on
the morrow. The ships commander,
bland as bartender in port, has
hidden himself from view. The purs-
er's window is shut as if Theoretically
sealed. The ships doctor has retired be-
hind the strictest Interpretation of hours
and rules. The chief and assistant stew
ards, to whom your great fee has already
gone for a choice seat at the table, refuse
to recognize you. Your room steward eyes
you with look of sharp suspicion and
close analysis. VIII you give him much
and will you fee generously? COM
prise his uttermost interest. But he will
permit no early familiarity. The steward
ess flaunts her uninterrupted head, plainly
saying, There are characters hon this Ter
vessel aside my h'own to sustain, STRIP The
boatswains, whose frizzled. fatherly faces
on the first day gave promise of sea yarns
and ocean lore revelations, are as stolid as
bronzes or brass. The sergeant at arms
and deck stewards walk around you, look
up and down, over and around, fore and
you that deck rules are deck law. sir. The
bell boys, those little dried up old COM
modores of the passage. library and
lavatories, regard you from beneath
beetling brows as with savage
advance protests against possible requests
for favors. Wander where you may on
your steamers decks or within her splendid
cabins, you find but savagery, selfish preoc-
and mute despair. The officers
and crew are one and all moodily recover
ing from port excesses. The few passengers
upon their legs are each nursing parting
melancholy, figuring upon trip expenses. or
the difference between the
songs and the scourges of the sea. The pre-
hosts are in the throes of unmit-
igated, unvanquishable sea-sickness. And
how it levels the proud and great! Look at
them sprawling in their chairs, hundreds of
them, under the lee awnings, hope, pride,
scorn, hauteur, all, flown like the flush of
the shriveled flowers below. That pompous
old fellow who can draw his check for
cool million, and who, on shore, reckons
himself boy of forty, you know, is
stretched there like drunkard, holding
his two sets of false teeth in his nerveless
hand with the most familiar abandon. He
recks not those who see; he sees not those
who reck. Here is a grand dame, as easy
subject of study. Her wig is displaced; the
powder and color has been sponged from
one side eff her face by some attentive
stewardess; her laces, founces and silks are
disheveled; she is snoring, diversified by
snorts and palateal staccatos: Berugged
ana d she SAD
capped from mouldy bridal chamber and
fallen in "Seven Dial's'' debnuch. Look at
this bellies beauty now. George, back there
in New York, would be lucky dog to catch
q glimpse of her divine face at this moment.
He would wait for no congo from Liverpool.
into dirty French gray upon her leathery
countenance. The fog has deposited a
clammy rime upon this. Strands of her
now waveless hair are futtering stickily
within her open mouth. Her eyes seem to
have gone back into her head an inch and
nrn u1D l. -, II
this wreck of beauty there is one bit of
color: 1t is in her pinky. pointed nose. 1t
would have paralyzed Helen to have worn a
25-cent bathing hat at sea. So from under
the edge of her $25 hat her sea-blistered
nose rises rare and red like some hectic
dolorous isles. In few days more the
long abused cuticle will peel from this little
nose in tenacious swirs and curls, and as
Helen steps upon the staging at Liverpool
the rude customs inspector will pronounce
an III American h'objeck.'
One might fill a book with these sea trav-
ell studies. A good deal besides ea-sickness
and its rank leveling power might be dwelt
upon. But the old traveller. and the first
tripper who is cautious and conservative,
will never be tempted into remarks about
his prowess in bouts with the fell destroyer.
At the first and second meals while the
taste of your New York friends champagne
is still sweet on your palate, you are likely
to roar little along this line. But you
will regret it. Listen to those retching
wretches in their state-rooms below. Each
one had flung challenge to old Neptune's
powers. The little dude has lisped under
his napkin, Lying wight down on
ones back'll do nausea, I'll allow The
Chicago packer, loading his plate with an
other swath of his own boneless ham, has
snorted, "Pshaw, Lake Michigan en- knock
the spots off this pond any time. for rough
ness. Nobody ever sick out our way" The
ladies chorus, Dear me. it isn't
possible any one could be ill
on this boat. is it now?' I
think it's just too lovely for anything p
The lawyer is oraGoric about it, summing
up before an invisible jury with inyincible
Now. sirs, '" and hoary citations and prece-
dents that settle the whole matter. The
clergyman, bless him for his faith. fancies
tits all merely a matter of the imagination"
While the man with the granite head, brass
jaw and iron stomach. classes the discus
sion-and his meals at table, with the rest
of US, for few days-by an explosive, "all
damned nonsense. sir ! Have a stomach
of iron like me, sir! ~ But they are all
done for now. The dude is developing his
Lying wight dwown" theory; the ladies are
gaspingly changing their adiectlves; the
packer is comparing the, peculiarities of
lake and pond; the clergyman has a new
study of the pleasures of the imagination
and the man with the iron stomach is slip
ping its cogs, as hellplessly as with the
first days until ''the banks are crossed. If
you have luckily had your little
battle at first, you now suf-
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