The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-08-31
OCEAN LINER STEWARDS.
Practically Live at sea-shore Leave
 Being Scarce

FFactlcally Live at Sea-Sh0re Leave
 Being Scarce
 Think what the ocean trip that buoys and thrills and exhilarates one the season of sea-sickness being passed-would mean if there were no vista of sightseeing or no vision of visiting or travelling or home at the other end of it; if one ocean trip fol- lowed on the heels of another, over and over again year in and year out; if the great, green, tossing waters were ones home, with only q day or two on shore every fortnight! I wonder if the thrill and collaboration would pass. With the working force of the great ships, the men and women that keep the beautiful moving hotels of the sea the same comfortable places one would find on shore, to them the water must sometimes seem weari- some. There is the stewardess, one of the most important factors in the life of the ship, on whom during the brief space of their sea trip the pas- .sengers depend, almost with a stronger sense of dependency than they do on any one else at any other time of their lves-to the stewardess the ocean trip means a season of hard work, of tending the peevishly sea-sick day and night; of doing the thousand and one little thing of the nurse and the la dies maid. For her there is little of the leisure to watch the waves, none of the frolicking in the saloon, and the starlit nights are spent in a round from stateroom to stateroom, answer ling querulous queries, listening to loud |moans and groans. The strains of music and the echo of laughter and gay chatted come to to her only faintly as she hurries to and fro to answer the ceaseless calls,
 When a woman becomes stewardess on a ship she practically gives up her home life and transfers it to her ship. She touches at port possibly once in 10 days or two weeks, has a day or two there, and then is off again with her face to another land In ex- change for family and friends there comes in her way hundreds of thous- ands of strangers, women and chill dren-for it is only with them that her duties lie-hundreds and thous- ands whom she attends in their pass ing back and forth between the conti- nents, many of whom she sees but the once, and who pass then out of her memory or leave only faint trace and impression added to the myriad other impressions stored in her mind.
 For the fortnight they are on board she sees their life at close range, catches stray shreds of stories and ronlances and comedies and tragedies but she seldom knows the beginnings and she never hears the ends. There people pass down the gang plank and out of her knowledge at one and the same time, She sees them from the deck fall into the embrace of some one, or reach out glad hands to a cir cle of waiting friends, and that is all The ends of the stories she mus lin7againe as she may, but she seldom Ilsnow Many of those to whom the stewartless has been kind during theil
 massage grow to have a warm feeling | and when they press the parting tip ir her hand and say a laughing good-by fbare is sometimes a promise to sent a card. to tell the end of the story
 of which the stewardess has heard a
 ,art but they never do. The new land ar home absorbs them too com pIetely and the stewardess passes ut ferlv from their minds, except as a vague memory
 In making 8 visit to two of the great greyhounds that lay res ing and pant