The Argosy — page 262: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

204 Board-Ship Friendships. squatter, according to the route you are travelling ; but whatever he is, you know that he is a gentleman, a man of good station, who can have no designs upon your purse, and so you are charmed with him. Your heart expands to his blandishments—possibly to his wine—and you give him your opinions on men, women, and things in general with a freedom which even at the time strikes you as scarcely prudent. But he reciprocates. He tells you, sotto voce, that the lady across the table is a divorcée, that the man with the big black whiskers is flying from justice, and that the other, with no hair at all on his face, is a well-known Fenian desperado. A man who can impart his confidences in this friendly way may be trusted with your own, you illogically think, because the excitement of going on board, the bustle, and the prospect of a week’s or a month's close companionship with such an agreeable rattle has put you a little off your head. ~ Well, it is all very well as long as it lasts. For a few days you and your board-ship friend might pass for Damon and Pythias together. But one morning there is a coolness—about a woman ; perhaps the very divorcée aforesaid—and you begin to think a good deal less of Mr. Pythias than heretofore. Next day, or the next, there is an actual quarrel, and then, to your infinite disgust, the perfidious Pythias manages to let all the people around know what you have been saying of them: to which he adds a good deal of what he has said himself. Friendships of this hot-house growth generally, indeed, turn into bitter enmities before the voyage is over, so that an old traveller will regard the advances of the apparently friendly, well-meaning fellow with suspicion, and keep him at a distance as much as possible. It is better to do this than to suffer the discomfort of sitting mext a man at breakfast, lunch and dinner, every day with whom you are on bad terms. It is better to do this than to have to encounter the furious looks of the pseudo divorcée, who is in facta most respectable person, fondly attached to her invalid husband who. 1s then on board: better than to stand an action for libel threatened by the man with the black whiskers, who turns out to be an emissary for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. Even a more dangerous kind of friendship than this last is a flirta- tion with a woman, double or single. The friendship in this case Is not forced upon one, certainly, but it 1s none the less perilous for that. On every ocean steamship there are pretty women, and pretty women without much to do. Dr. Watts tells us what are the diabo- lical consequences of idleness. The offer of a book to read, or of a chair to sit down on may be the commencement of Heaven knows what—a marriage, an elopement, a breach of promise suit, an appear- ance in Sir James Hannan’s Court, or a double suicide after the French manner with charcoal. ‘‘ What great events from trifling causes spring! ” COIN @ LDOOlKKS.EO im