Читать книгу A Journey of a Jayhawker - W. Y. Morgan - Страница 6

LEAVING THE LAND.

Steamship Arabic, May 29, 1905.

In spite of the fact that a trip across the Atlantic is not considered dangerous or exceptional, there is always a lot of sentiment which comes up into the throat of the traveler when he goes aboard the ship that is to take him out of his own country and across the ocean to a foreign land. Long before the Arabic was to sail it was filled with passengers and friends who had come to say good-by and wave farewell. The custom is whenever a friend is to start on such a trip to accompany him or her to the dock, send flowers to be placed in the stateroom, and to stand on the wharf and wave a handkerchief until the responding figure on the deck of the ship is no longer recognizable in the distance. Of course, we were so far from home that there was nobody to do these honors for wandering Kansans, so we picked out a few nice-looking people who seemed to be there for curiosity and vigorously shouted and waved good-by to them, and they had the good taste to respond. A Colorado man who had been on the trip before told me afterward that the young fellow who had called so cheerily and waved so vigorously at him as the steamer pulled away from land, was a hotel porter whom he had hired for a half-dollar to come to the wharf and bid him godspeed on his journey.

The Arabic turned away from the dock at 4.30 in the afternoon of May 25, and steamed slowly and majestically down the harbor and out toward the ocean with a half-dozen little pilot-boats and revenue cutters whistling and dancing like a lot of little dogs frisking and playing around a big dog as it walks down the street. The old ship Constitution, heroine of America’s early naval warfare, was passed, the forts and the navy yard with the modern warships and guns, the last island and the last American flag faded into the distance, and a solemn thought of leaving one’s native land and of possible seasickness makes one choke with patriotism and foreboding. It is too late now to back out. There is no chance to get off. For a week the ship will never stop, and there will be no place upon which the eye can rest except water and sky. A flood of sentiment rushes through one and leaks a little at the eyes as the mind turns to those who have been so near and dear and are now to be so far away. That is the feeling experienced by all travelers, and I want to be recorded present and voting on the question, although as a matter of fact while the Arabic was leaving the dock and country I was quarreling with the purser over the stateroom and trying to get the steward to help me handle baggage when he was so full of American liquor that he could do nothing but say “yessir” (hic) and smile.

NO TIME FOR SENTIMENT.

No doubt everyone has noticed how the apparently little things of life occupy us at most critical and important times. I remember when at a certain stage I was accomplishing an object to which I had worked industriously and whole-heartedly. I should have been filled with happiness and pride as I faced a large crowd of people. As a matter of fact I was miserable because my collar did not fit my shirt and kept bobbing up and down in a refractory way. The first time I saw Niagara Falls, whither I had gone to be overcome with the grandeur and beauty of the scene, I put in all my time trying to find a place to get a sandwich. It is said that when Gladstone was making his great fight for Irish home rule he was sitting on his bench in parliament, apparently wrapped in deep thought. His colleagues did not disturb him, for they supposed he was pondering the question which was agitating every mind. Finally he straightened himself up and said to himself, but so those near could hear: “After all, I will plant that rosebush in the front instead of at the side of the doorway.” The energetic man who is traveling amid picturesque and historical places puts in more time figuring out time-tables and wondering whether he will get dinner in a dining-car or at a lunch station, than he does in soulful meditation on the wonders of nature or the handiwork of man. And the general run of women, I am firmly convinced by circumstantial evidence, will approach the subject of a European trip or a church wedding, not with the thoughts of the lands to be visited or the responsibility to be assumed, but with minds full of the problem of whether four shirtwaists and a skirt will do better than two dresses. This peculiarity of humanity has often impressed me, so I was not surprised when I realized as I returned more or less triumphant from my battles with purser and steward that I missed most of the thrills and throbs that had been promised me by all the guidebooks and books of travel that I had read.

An ocean voyage is being robbed of most of its terrors. The Arabic is a big ship, one of the largest. It stretches out over so many waves that it does very little rolling or plunging. We have been out for three days and there have been really no cases of seasickness. I fully expected to be seasick, and it is a great disappointment. However, I am not going to ask the company to refund my fare on that account. Everybody is afraid of seasickness, and down in his heart everybody wishes that everybody else might be sick and he alone left to proudly walk the deck and smile at the victims. The only person who suffers from seasickness is the individual affected. You may run a sliver in your finger and the family will gather around with words of sympathy. You may get a cinder in your eye and your friends will hurry forward to help get it out. But if you are suffering with seasickness, and death would almost be welcome, your friends will only grin and their words of condolence are false and mocking.

A modern steamship is constructed for safety, comfort, and almost luxury. When you get those three qualities there is very little left of the poetry or novelty of ocean traveling. We still speak of the ship “sailing,” although, of course, it doesn’t. The modern ship steams. We have read all of our lives about the beautiful white-wings and the jolly jack tars. The reality is a mammoth engine out of sight, a big smoke-stack, and a lot of black, dust-covered, sweaty firemen. The “sailors” no longer climb the rigging and the masts, but go down in the hole and shovel coal. My ideas of the sea came from Oliver Optic. I want to hear the boatswain pipe, the mate’s command, “All hands belay ship,” and see the captain as he stands at his post and with an occasional “Steady, my hearties,” direct the seamen as they sing their songs and clamber up the masts. That is beauty and poetry. But the reality is that the captain whistles down the tube to the engineer and he gives the order, “More coal, you sons of guns; stop that noise and fire up.” That is fact, and makes traveling comfortable but not soul-inspiring.

The White Star line, on which we are traveling, belongs to the big steamship company merger, formed by Pierpont Morgan a few years ago. It is really owned by American capital and controlled by American financiers, but the ships carry the British flag and are manned by British officers and men. England manages things so that it pays to carry the English flag. I have a great deal of respect for England. With all our American enterprise, energy and ability, we look like a tallow candle beside an electric light when it comes to ships and international commerce. The government of England always looks after its shipping interests and encourages capital to send English vessels and English crews carrying English merchandise to the furthermost parts. Prizes, bounties, subsidies and favors of all kinds have been used to make the merchant marine of Great Britain greater than that of the rest of the world. The English are a great people, and they are conscious of it. And they see to it that everybody else understands the fact. There isn’t anything in this American-owned ship that comes from the United States except what the passengers have in their baggage. The crew from captain to cook are English. The supplies are all bought in England. The ships are built and repaired at Belfast. Coal for the voyage both ways comes from Wales. English meats and even ice-cream are purchased in Liverpool for the round trip. You can’t buy an American postage stamp, and United States money is not taken except at exchange below par. The American who has been going through life under the impression that America is the whole thing has his feelings stepped on nearly every time he turns around.

The daily life on a steamship is a good deal like I am told it is on a limited Santa Fe Pullman train, only there is a little more room. There are all kinds of people on the Arabic, mostly from England, the United States or Boston. Soon after we left port I met a fellow who looked like somebody from home. I asked him where he was from, and he said Nevada. I said I was from Kansas, and he enthusiastically grasped my hand and said, “Then we are neighbors.” You do get a good deal of that feeling. Afterward we met some folks from Colorado, and to see us warm up to each other would have made you think we were a long separated but happily reunited family. When anyone asks me where I hail from and I say “Kansas,” the answer is nearly always “Oh.” And then I shut my eyes and wait for the next remark. It never fails to come: “Do you know Carrie Nation?” If I get a fair show I generally manage in the course of conversation to incidentally ring in a few things about Kansas that they never heard before (and once in a long while something I never heard before myself). I don’t have to confine myself to things I can prove. Colorado and Nevada will stand by me, and if the returning English tourists are not regretting they did not see the wonderful State of Kansas they are simply figuring me out a liar. The poet said: “How sweet it is for one’s country to die.” Let us add: “How sweet it is for one’s country to lie.”

That reminds me of a good joke on myself. An Englishman was complaining of the voyage and wishing he was in old. England. I did a little rapture talk about the ocean, and said I loved to go on the deck, watching the never-ending blue of water and sky and just lie and lie and lie there. He said: “I believe you told me you were a newspaper man.”