lads, 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. Not a word was said; only when they were gone Mackay
sullenly damned their impudence under his breath; but we were all
conscious of an icy influence and a dead break in the course of our
enjoyment.

STEERAGE TYPES

We had a fellow on board, an Irish-American, for all the world like a
beggar in a print by Callot; one-eyed, with great, splay crow's-feet
round the sockets; a knotty squab nose coming down over his moustache; a
miraculous hat; a shirt that had been white, ay, ages long ago; an
alpaca coat in its last sleeves; and, without hyperbole, no buttons to
his trousers. Even in these rags and tatters, the man twinkled all over
with impudence like a piece of sham jewellery; and I have heard him
offer a situation to one of his fellow-passengers with the air of a
lord. Nothing could overlie such a fellow; a kind of base success was
written on his brow. He was then in his ill days; but I can imagine him
in Congress with his mouth full of bombast and sawder. As we moved in
the same circle, I was brought necessarily into his society. I do not
think I ever heard him say anything that was true, kind, or interesting;
but there was entertainment in the man's demeanour. You might call him a
half-educated Irish Tigg.

Our Russian made a remarkable contr