The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-01-31
A MATTER OF FACT.
Copyright 1892 by the Author.


Steer through the South Pacific swell;
Go where the branching coral hives
Unending strife of endless lives
Where, lsagued about the wildered boat,
The rainbow jeliies fu and float;
And, lifting where the LAYER fingers,
The stsrfsh trips on all her fingers;
Where, fnsath his myriad spines ashock,
The sea egg rippies down the rock;
An orange wonder dimly guessed,
From darkness where the cuttles rest,
nooFed DER the darker deeps that hide
The blind white sea-suake and his bride;
Who. browsing, nose the long lost ships
Let down through darkness 10 their lips
The PAINS.
Once priest, always q priest; once
Mason, always q Mason; but once a jour-
nalist, always and forever journalist.
There were three Oh rs, all new spaper
men. the only passengers on little tramp
steamer that ran where her owners told
her to go. She had once been in the Bill
bao iron ore business, had been lent to
the Spanish government for service at
Manila, and was ending her days in the
Cape Cod cooiie trade, with occasional
trips TO Madagascar, and even so far az
England. We found her going to So uth-
smpton in ballast and shipped in her be-
cause the fares were nominal. There was
Keller, of an American paper, on his way
back TO the states from palace executions
In Madagascar; there was a burly half
Dutchman called Zuyland, who owned
and edited paper up country; and there
was myself, who solemnly put away all
Journalism, vowing to forget that / had
ever known the difference between an i'm
print and stereo advertisement.
Three minutes after Keller spoke to me,
rs the Rsthmines cleared Cape Town, L
had forgotten the aloofness that desired
TO feign and was in heated discussion on
the immortality of expanding kilograms
beyond certain point. Then Zuyland
came out of his stateroom and we were all
at home instantly, because we were men
of the same profession, needing no intro
duction. We annexed the boat formally,
broke open the passengers bathroom door
---on the Manila lines the dons do not
wash--cleaned out the orange peel and
cigar ends in the bottom fthe bath, hired
q Lascar to shave US throughout the voy-
age and then asked each others names.
Three ordinary men would have quar-
relied through sheer boredom before they
reached Southampton. We, by virtue of
our craft, we're anything but ordinary men.
A large percentage of the tales of the
world, the thirty-nine that cannot be told
TO ladies and the one that can, are common
property. coming of a common stock. We
told them all, as matter of form, with all
their local and specific variants which are
surprising. Then came, in the intervals of
steady card playing, more personal histo-
ries of adventure and things seen anu re-
ported, panics among white folk, when the
blind terror ran from man to man on the
Brooklyn bridge, and the people crushed
each other 70 death they knew not why:
fires, and faces that opened and shut their
mouths horribly at red-hot window
framesi wrecks in frost and snow, re-
ported from the sleet-sheathed rescue tug
st the risk of frost-bite; long rides after
diamond thieves skrmishes on the veldt
and in municipal committees with the
Beers; glimpses of lazy. tangled Cape
politics; card tales, horse tales, woman
tales, by the score and the half-hundred;
till the first mate. who had seen more than
US all put together, but lacked words in
which to clothe his tales, sat open-mouthed
far into the dawn.
When the tales were done we picked up