“Sir, I have passed my life on the St. John’s river, and I assure you the navigation of the high seas is child’s play compared to the navigation of the St. John’s river.” Silence follows this stern rebuke.
It is evident that sociability will form no part of our day’s diversion. Although humankind is so sparsely represented, we carry a few score of pigs below, and they keep up a grunting chorus among themselves. Among the passengers grouped round the breakfast table is one fierce-looking individual with ginger-coloured hair, and fat, clean-shaven face, who evidently likes to hear himself talk; he invades the general silence, and speaks like an oracle, flings down his opinion as though it were a challenging gauntlet, and defies any one to take it up. We have most of us some friend with similar characteristics, with whom conversation is simply impossible, though they are always armed and ready for a game of contradiction. Advance an argument, or venture on a ripple of pleasant small talk, as modestly as you may, your arguments are knocked down one after the other, like ninepins, as fast as you set them up, and your rippling talk is swamped in a wave of fine phrases. I ventured on three observations, mere commonplaces, which were politely waived aside. I was a woman and a stranger, and so escaped flat contradiction. As one after the other we drifted from the table somebody said, in a grumbling undertone,
“That fellow ought to be flung overboard; he’s no fit company for travelling Christians.”
“Before the day’s over he’ll get a lick the rough side of my tongue, you bet,” said somebody else.
I am happy to say that performance was not carried out, as the obnoxious person, in company with a score of fat hogs, got off at the first landing-stage, and a woman with a large family of small children came on. These kept things lively the whole day long. She lived in the constant fear that one or other of her progeny would fall overboard; they did not have a moment’s peace of their lives; she was always at their heels, diving after them, fishing them out of odd nooks and corners whither childish curiosity led them. We settled ourselves down in the bow of the boat to take general observations of the scenery we were passing through.