My Inspection Ticket said Room H 22, and a steward took me there. There were seven other occupants. Most of them were taking their ease in their berths and smoking. They were all English or American. I responded to their cheery hello, but their carbonic gas was strong, and the portholes proved to be immovable. I sat down on a lower berth, bumped my head against the top one, and had hardly room for my knees in the aisle. My carbonic gas did not improve the air. I felt discouraged, and went out. Nearby I saw a most capacious 4-berth room, and there was a vacancy in it. Henri Bergson says that “life proceeds by insinuation.” I felt less gloomy. I found the bedroom steward and asked him whether I could be changed. He was amicable but not quite concrete, a bit of a Jesuit. About this time word flashed by that we were back at the Landing Stage for the cabin passengers: deferring the affairs of moment, I went on deck.
We all pushed aft for a good view, only to find a rope stretched across the deck, and a grim sailor guarding it. “That’s all the scope you get.” We flattened back against one another. And they let down a beautiful canopied gangway for the upper classes.
Braided officers stood in a row to receive, on a nice clear deck. All the stewards were lined up in fresh white coats. Against the sky line we studied the new angles of hat plumes. On they stepped with leisured gait, with an air of distinguished fatigue. “The daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with stretched forth necks, walking and mincing as they go.” Indifferently they handed their light burdens to the now demure stewards. I looked around at my comrades back of the rope. A child in arms next to me chortled as he bandaged his mother’s eyes. She gently removed the bandage, only to be blinded again. Behind me, a buxom Swede looked open-eyed at her feathered sisters abaft. Everywhere the interest was intense and simple. I turned again to envisage the daughters of Zion. As in another world they moved—a world where policemen are unnecessary, where stewards are spring-heeled, where officers stand in line, where eyelids are not officially scrutinized nor polls inspected, where the gangway has a canopy and weariness is consoled. I admired “the bravery of their anklets, and the cauls and the crescents; the pendants, and the bracelets and the mufflers.” Must it not be delightful, said I to myself, to merit so much attention from everyone, and to be so prettily arrayed? Must it not be pleasant to have eyelids so immune, and to have a quite uninspected poll?