"Now, if ever you are going a short passage, and are at all nervous, you
lay in a good load. It's a good load in the hold what steadies the ship.
It's them half-empty cruisers as goes a-rollin' and a-pitchin' and
a-heavin' all over the place, with their stern up'ards half the time.
You lay in ballast."
It seemed very reasonable advice.
Aunt Emma came in the afternoon. She said she was so glad she had caught
me. Something told her to change her mind and come on Friday instead of
Saturday. It was Providence, she said.
I wish Providence would mind its own business, and not interfere in my
affairs: it does not understand them.
She says she shall stop till I come back, as she wants to see me again
before she goes. I told her I might not be back for a month. She said
it didn't matter; she had plenty of time, and would wait for me.
The family entreat me to hurry home.
I ate a very fair dinner--"laid in a good stock of ballast," as my
seafaring friend would have said; wished "Good-bye!" to everybody, and
kissed Aunt Emma; promised to take care of myself--a promise which,
please Heaven, I will faithfully keep, cost me what it may--hailed a cab
and started.
I reached Victoria some time before B. I secured two corner seats in a
smoking-carriage, and then paced up and down the platform waiting for
him.
When men have nothing else to occupy their minds, they take to thinking.
Having nothing better to do until B. arrived, I fell to musing.
What a wonderful piece of Socialism modern civilisation has become!--not
the Socialism of the so-called Socialists--a system modelled apparently
upon the methods of the convict prison--a system under which each
miserable sinner is to be compelled to labour, like a beast of burden,
for no personal benefit to himself, but only for the good of the
community--a world where there are to be no men, but only numbers--where
there is to be no ambition and no hope and no fear,--but the Socialism of
free men, working side by side in the common workshop, each one for the
wage to which his skill and energy entitle him; the Socialism of
responsible, thinking individuals, not of State-directed automata.
Here was I, in exchange for the result of some of my labour, going to be
taken by Society for a treat, to the middle of Europe and back. Railway
lines had been laid over the whole 700 or 800 miles to facilitate my
progress; bridges had been built, and tunnels made; an army of engineers,
and guards, and signal-men, and porters, and clerks were waiting to take
charge of me, and to see to my comfort and safety. All I had to do was
to tell Society (here represented by a railway booking-clerk) where I
wanted to go, and to step into a carriage; all the rest would be done for
me. Books and papers had been written and printed; so that if I wished
to beguile the journey by reading, I could do so. At various places on
the route, thoughtful Society had taken care to be ready for me with all
kinds of refreshment (her sandwiches might be a little fresher, but maybe
she thinks new bread injurious for me). When I am tired of travelling
and want to rest, I find Society waiting for me with dinner and a
comfortable bed, with hot and cold water to wash in and towels to wipe
upon. Wherever I go, whatever I need, Society, like the enslaved genii
of some Eastern tale, is ready and anxious to help me, to serve me, to do
my bidding, to give me enjoyment and pleasure. Society will take me to
Ober-Ammergau, will provide for all my wants on the way, and, when I am
there, will show me the Passion Play, which she has arranged and
rehearsed and will play for my instruction; will bring me back any way I
like to come, explaining, by means of her guide-books and histories,
everything upon the way that she thinks can interest me; will, while I am
absent, carry my messages to those I have left behind me in England, and
will bring me theirs in return; will look after me and take care of me
and protect me like a mother--as no mother ever could.
All that she asks in return is, that I shall do the work she has given me
to do. As a man works, so Society deals by him.
To me Society says: "You sit at your desk and write, that is all I want
you to do. You are not good for much, but you can spin out yards of what
you and your friends, I suppose, call literature; and some people seem to
enjoy reading it. Very well: you sit there and write this literature, or
whatever it is, and keep your mind fixed on that. I will see to
everything else for you. I will provide you with writing materials, and
books of wit and humour, and paste and scissors, and everything else that
may be necessary to you in your trade; and I will feed you and clothe you
and lodge you, and I will take you about to places that you wish to go
to; and I will see that you have plenty of tobacco and all other things
practicable that you may desire--provided that you work well. The more
work you do, and the better work you do, the better I shall look after
you. You write--that is all I want you to do."
"But," I say to Society, "I don't like work; I don't want to work. Why
should I be a slave and work?"
"All right," answers Society, "don't work. I'm not forcing you. All I
say is, that if you don't work for me, I shall not work for you. No work
from you, no dinner from me--no holidays, no tobacco."
And I decide to be a slave, and work.
Society has no notion of paying all men equally. Her great object is to
encourage brain. The man who merely works by his muscles she regards as
very little superior to the horse or the ox, and provides for him just a
little better. But the moment he begins to use his head, and from the
labourer rises to the artisan, she begins to raise his wages.
Of course hers is a very imperfect method of encouraging thought. She is
of the world, and takes a worldly standard of cleverness. To the
shallow, showy writer, I fear, she generally pays far more than to the
deep and brilliant thinker; and clever roguery seems often more to her
liking than honest worth. But her scheme is a right and sound one; her
aims and intentions are clear; her methods, on the whole, work fairly
well; and every year she grows in judgment.
One day she will arrive at perfect wisdom, and will pay each man
according to his deserts.
But do not be alarmed. This will not happen in our time.
Turning round, while still musing about Society, I ran against B.
(literally). He thought I was a clumsy ass at first, and said so; but,
on recognising me, apologised for his mistake. He had been there for
some time also, waiting for me. I told him that I had secured two corner
seats in a smoking-carriage, and he replied that he had done so too. By
a curious coincidence, we had both fixed upon the same carriage. I had
taken the corner seats near the platform, and he had booked the two
opposite corners. Four other passengers sat huddled up in the middle.
We kept the seats near the door, and gave the other two away. One should
always practise generosity.
There was a very talkative man in our carriage. I never came across a
man with such a fund of utterly uninteresting anecdotes. He had a friend
with him--at all events, the man was his friend when they started--and he
talked to this friend incessantly, from the moment the train left
Victoria until it arrived at Dover. First of all he told him a long
story about a dog. There was no point in the story whatever. It was
simply a bald narrative of the dog's daily doings. The dog got up in the
morning and barked at the door, and when they came down and opened the
door there he was, and he stopped all day in the garden; and when his
wife (not the dog's wife, the wife of the man who was telling the story)
went out in the afternoon, he was asleep on the grass, and they brought
him into the house, and he played with the children, and in the evening
he slept in the coal-shed, and next morning there he was again. And so
on, for about forty minutes.
A very dear chum or near relative of the dog's might doubtless have found
the account enthralling; but what possible interest a stranger--a man who
evidently didn't even know the dog--could be expected to take in the
report, it was difficult to conceive.
The friend at first tried to feel excited, and murmured: "Wonderful!"
"Very strange, indeed!" "How curious!" and helped the tale along by such
ejaculations as, "No, did he though?" "And what did you do then?" or,
"Was that on the Monday or the Tuesday, then?" But as the story
progressed, he appeared to take a positive dislike to the dog, and only
yawned each time that it was mentioned.
Indeed, towards the end, I think, though I trust I am mistaken, I heard
him mutter, "Oh, damn the dog!"
After the dog story, we thought we were going to have a little quiet.
But we were mistaken; for, with the same breath with which he finished
the dog rigmarole, our talkative companion added:
"But I can tell you a funnier thing than that--"
We all felt we could believe that assertion. If he had boasted that he
could tell a duller, more uninteresting story, we should have doubted
him; but the possibility of his being able to relate something funnier,
we could readily grasp.
But it was not a bit funnier, after all. It was only longer and more
involved. It was the history of a man who grew his own celery; and then,
later on, it turned out that his wife was the niece, by the mother's
side, of a man who had made an ottoman out of an old packing-case.
The friend glanced round the carriage apologetically about the middle of
this story, with an expression that said:
"I'm awfully sorry, gentlemen; but it really is not my fault. You see
the position I'm in. Don't blame me. Don't make it worse for me to bear
than it is."
And we each replied with pitying, sympathetic looks that implied:
"That's all right, my dear sir; don't you fret about that. We see how it
is. We only wish we could do something to help you."
The poor fellow seemed happier and more resigned after that.
B. and I hurried on board at Dover, and were just in time to secure the
last two berths in the boat; and we were glad that we had managed to do
this because our idea was that we should, after a good supper, turn in
and go comfortably to sleep.
B. said:
"What I like to do, during a sea passage, is to go to sleep, and then
wake up and find that I am there."
We made a very creditable supper. I explained to B. the ballast
principle held by my seafaring friend, and he agreed with me that the
idea seemed reasonable; and, as there was a fixed price for supper, and
you had as much as you liked, we determined to give the plan a fair
trial.
B. left me after supper somewhat abruptly, as it appeared to me, and I
took a stroll on deck by myself. I did not feel very comfortable. I am
what I call a moderate sailor. I do not go to excess in either
direction. On ordinary occasions, I can swagger about and smoke my pipe,
and lie about my Channel experiences with the best of them. But when
there is what the captain calls "a bit of a sea on," I feel sad, and try
to get away from the smell of the engines and the proximity of people who
smoke green cigars.
There was a man smoking a peculiarly mellow and unctuous cigar on deck
when I got there. I don't believe he smoked it because he enjoyed it.
He did not look as if he enjoyed it. I believe he smoked it merely to
show how well he was feeling, and to irritate people who were not feeling
very well.
There is something very blatantly offensive about the man who feels well
on board a boat.
I am very objectionable myself, I know, when I am feeling all right. It
is not enough for me that I am not ill. I want everybody to see that I
am not ill. It seems to me that I am wasting myself if I don't let every
human being in the vessel know that I am not ill. I cannot sit still and
be thankful, like you'd imagine a sensible man would. I walk about the
ship--smoking, of course--and look at people who are not well with mild
but pitying surprise, as if I wondered what it was like and how they did
it. It is very foolish of me, I know, but I cannot help it. I suppose
it is the human nature that exists in even the best of us that makes us
act like this.
I could not get away from this man's cigar; or when I did, I came within
range of the perfume from the engine-room, and felt I wanted to go back
to the cigar. There seemed to be no neutral ground between the two.
If it had not been that I had paid for saloon, I should have gone fore.
It was much fresher there, and I should have been much happier there
altogether. But I was not going to pay for first-class and then ride
third--that was not business. No, I would stick to the swagger part of
the ship, and feel aristocratic and sick.
A mate, or a boatswain, or an admiral, or one of those sort of people--I
could not be sure, in the darkness, which it was--came up to me as I was
leaning with my head against the paddle-box, and asked me what I thought
of the ship. He said she was a new boat, and that this was her first
voyage.