pink and amber; the fog-horn still blew, stertorous and intermittent;

and to add to the discomfort, the seamen were just beginning to wash
down the decks. But for a sick man this was heaven compared to the

steerage. I found him standing on the hot-water pipe, just forward
of the saloon deck house. He was smaller than I had fancied, and

plain-looking; but his face was distinguished by strange and
fascinating eyes, limpid grey from a distance, but, when looked into,

full of changing colours and grains of gold. His manners were mild
and uncompromisingly plain; and I soon saw that, when once started,

he delighted to talk. His accent and language had been formed in the
most natural way, since he was born in Ireland, had lived a quarter

of a century on the banks of Tyne, and was married to a Scots wife.
A fisherman" target="_blank" title="n.渔民，渔夫，打鱼人">fisherman in the season, he had fished the east coast from

Fisherrow to Whitby. When the season was over, and the great boats,
which required extra hands, were once drawn up on shore till the next

spring, he worked as a labourer about chemical furnaces, or along the
wharves unloading vessels. In this comparativelyhumble way of life

he had gathered a competence, and could speak of his comfortable
house, his hayfield, and his garden. On this ship, where so many

accomplished artisans were fleeing from starvation, he was present on
a pleasure trip to visit a brother in New York.

Ere he started, he informed me, he had been warned against the
steerage and the steerage fare, and recommended to bring with him a

ham and tea and a spice loaf. But he laughed to scorn such counsels.
'I'm not afraid,' he had told his adviser; 'I'll get on for ten days.

I've not been a fisherman" target="_blank" title="n.渔民，渔夫，打鱼人">fisherman for nothing.' For it is no light matter,
as he reminded me, to be in an open boat, perhaps waist-deep with

herrings, day breaking with a scowl, and for miles on every hand lee-
shores, unbroken, iron-bound, surf-beat, with only here and there an

anchorage where you dare not lie, or a harbour impossible to enter
with the wind that blows. The life of a North Sea fisher is one long

chapter of exposure and hard work and insufficient fare; and even if
he makes land at some bleak fisher port, perhaps the season is bad or

his boat has been unlucky and after fifty hours' unsleeping vigilance
and toil, not a shop will give him credit for a loaf of bread. Yet

the steerage of the emigrant ship had been too vile for the endurance
of a man thus rudely trained. He had scarce eaten since he came on

board, until the day before, when his appetite was tempted by some
excellent pea-soup. We were all much of the same mind on board, and

beginning with myself, had dined upon pea-soup not wisely but too
well; only with him the excess had been punished, perhaps because he

was weakened by former abstinence, and his first meal had resulted in
a cramp. He had determined to live henceforth on biscuit; and when,

two months later, he should return to England, to make the passage by
saloon. The second cabin, after due inquiry, he scouted as another

edition of the steerage.
He spoke apologetically of his emotion when ill. 'Ye see, I had no

call to be here,' said he; 'and I thought it was by with me last
night. I've a good house at home, and plenty to nurse me, and I had

no real call to leave them.' Speaking of the attentions he had
received from his shipmates generally, 'they were all so kind,' he

said, 'that there's none to mention.' And except in so far as I
might share in this, he troubled me with no reference to my services.

But what affected me in the most lively manner was the wealth of this
day-labourer, paying a two months' pleasure visit to the States, and

preparing to return in the saloon, and the new testimony rendered by
his story, not so much to the horrors of the steerage as to the

habitual comfort of the working classes. One foggy, frosty December
evening, I encountered on Liberton Hill, near Edinburgh, an Irish

labourer trudging homeward from the fields. Our roads lay together,
and it was natural that we should fall into talk. He was covered

with mud; an inoffensive, ignorant creature, who thought the Atlantic
Cable was a secret contrivance of the masters the better to oppress

labouring mankind; and I confess I was astonished to learn that he
had nearly three hundred pounds in the bank. But this man had

travelled over most of the world, and enjoyed wonderful opportunities
on some American railroad, with two dollars a shift and double pay on

Sunday and at night; whereas my fellow-passenger had never quitted
Tyneside, and had made all that he possessed in that same accursed,

down-falling England, whenceskilledmechanics, engineers,
millwrights, and carpenters were fleeing as from the native country

of starvation.
Fitly enough, we slid off on the subject of strikes and wages and

hard times. Being from the Tyne, and a man who had gained and lost
in his own pocket by these fluctuations, he had much to say, and held

strong opinions on the subject. He spoke sharply of the masters,
and, when I led him on, of the men also. The masters had been

selfish and obstructive, the men selfish, silly, and light-headed.
He rehearsed to me the course of a meeting at which he had been

present, and the somewhat long discourse which he had there
pronounced, calling into question the wisdom and even the good faith

of the Union delegates; and although he had escaped himself through
flush times and starvation times with a handsomely provided purse, he

had so little faith in either man or master, and so profound a terror
for the unerring Nemesis of mercantile affairs, that he could think

of no hope for our country outside of a sudden and complete political
subversion. Down must go Lords and Church and Army; and capital, by

some happy direction, must change hands from worse to better, or
England stood condemned. Such principles, he said, were growing

'like a seed.'
From this mild, soft, domestic man, these words sounded unusually

ominous and grave. I had heard enough revolutionary talk among my
workmen fellow-passengers; but most of it was hot and turgid, and

fell discredited from the lips of unsuccessful men. This man was
calm; he had attained prosperity and ease; he disapproved the policy

which had been pursued by labour in the past; and yet this was his
panacea, - to rend the old country from end to end, and from top to

bottom, and in clamour and civil discordremodel it with the hand of
violence.

THE STOWAWAYS
On the Sunday, among a party of men who were talking in our

companion, Steerage No. 2 and 3, we remarked a new figure. He wore
tweed clothes, well enough made if not very fresh, and a plain

smoking-cap. His face was pale, with pale eyes, and spiritedly
enough designed; but though not yet thirty, a sort of blackguardly

degeneration had already overtaken his features. The fine nose had
grown fleshy towards the point, the pale eyes were sunk in fat. His

hands were strong and elegant; his experience of life evidently
varied; his speech full of pith and verve; his manners forward, but

perfectly presentable. The lad who helped in the second cabin told
me, in answer to a question, that he did not know who he was, but

thought, 'by his way of speaking, and because he was so polite, that
he was some one from the saloon.'

I was not so sure, for to me there was something equivocal in his air
and bearing. He might have been, I thought, the son of some good

family who had fallen early into dissipation and run from home. But,
making every allowance, how admirable was his talk! I wish you could

have heard hin, tell his own stories. They were so swingingly set
forth, in such dramatic language, and illustrated here and there by

such luminous bits of acting, that they could only lose in any
reproduction. There were tales of the P. and O. Company, where he

had been an officer; of the East Indies, where in former years he had
lived lavishly; of the Royal Engineers, where he had served for a

period; and of a dozen other sides of life, each introducing some
vigorous thumb-nail portrait. He had the talk to himself that night,

we were all so glad to listen. The best talkers usually address
themselves to some particular society; there they are kings,

elsewhere camp-followers, as a man may know Russian and yet be
ignorant of Spanish; but this fellow had a frank, headlong power of

style, and a broad, human choice of subject, that would have turned
any circle in the world into a circle of hearers. He was a Homeric

talker, plain, strong, and cheerful; and the things and the people of
which he spoke became readily and clearly present to the minds of

those who heard him. This, with a certain added colouring of
rhetoric and rodomontade, must have been the style of Burns, who

equally charmed the ears of duchesses and hostlers.
Yet freely and personally as he spoke, many points remained obscure