White faces appeared for the first time, and
began to take on colour from the wind.
I was kept hard at work
making cigarettes for one amateur after another, and my less than
moderate skill was heartily admired. Lastly, down sat the fiddler
in our midst and began to discourse his reels, and jigs, and
ballads, with now and then a voice or two to take up the air and
throw in the interest of human speech.
Through this merry and good-hearted scene there came three cabin
passengers, a gentleman and two young ladies, picking their way
with little gracious titters of indulgence, and a Lady-Bountiful
air about nothing, which galled me to the quick. I have little of
the radical in social questions, and have always nourished an idea
that one person was as good as another. But I began to be troubled
by this episode. It was astonishing what insults these people
managed to convey by their presence. They seemed to throw their
clothes in our faces. Their eyes searched us all over for tatters
and incongruities. A laugh was ready at their lips; but they were
too well-mannered to indulge it in our hearing. Wait a bit, till
they were all back in the saloon, and then hear how wittily they
would depict the manners of the steerage. We were in truth very
innocently, cheerfully, and sensibly engaged, and there was no
shadow of excuse for the swaying elegant superiority with which
these damsels passed among us, or for the stiff and waggish glances
of their squire.
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