The first night out we had a good deal of contention about berths. We had more passengers than the law of this company allows; they are not allowed to take one passenger more than they can accommodate.
Among the passengers on board was the first dancer of Constantinople. Those who had spoken for berths went to bed soon for fear disputes would arise about the right of them. I made sure of mine by sitting by it and watching it. After all the berthers had taken possession of their respective places, I discovered many persons taking berths on the sofas around the cabin; there were some curtains hanging about to make screens, to dress and undress behind, and the lights always burned dimly. These sofas were on a level with the lower berths, consequently, whoever took a sofa berth, was almost sleeping with the occupant of the lower berth.
There was some choice about them, inasmuch as some were wider than others. I could see through my thin curtain that some one had picked out X 31, my own doorway. I lay like a rock to find out who it was, until I saw that everybody was in a resting attitude, after which I quietly drew back my curtain, to see what my neighbor was like. I knew it was some respectable person from the sweet smell of roses and other eastern scents which I inhaled. I could dimly see a Madonna figure of considerable size, and the figure was nearly touching me. I did not get scared but lay as quiet as possible. I saw plainly that sleep had sent in a regret for that night, the lamp flickered up and went down, leaving a dark twilight perceptible around the cabin, and I put my hand slowly out to see what my neighbor felt like, and I felt the veritable prima donna of Constantinople, "_qu est ce que vous voulez_," said she, "_rien_," said I, and shut my eyes and went to sleep in a hurry, and slept as sound as any man could, by the side of a live Prima Donna.
When Rome had a Cæsar and a Cicero, and a Cassius with a Brutus, Athens dictated the arts and sciences for her. Though she cannot claim the originality of them, she can the perfection of beautifying. The conquest of Alexander the Great, in Egypt, among the Africans, was considered the greatest triumph of conquest ever made by man, because it enabled the warlike people of Greece, to adorn their triumphs with the spoils of the vanquished. Egypt was a higher sphere of artistical science than any other nation on the earth. This will naturally convey an idea to the world that the black man was the first skillful animal on the earth, because Homer describes the Egyptians as men with wooly hair, thick lips, flat feet, and black, and we have no better authority than Homer. We know not the exact epoch of his time, but we know it was before any other authentic chronicler, save the sacred book of Moses, by the fact that he voyaged on the Nile before the pyramids were built, which we can trace three thousand years.