The Argosy — page 264: what you’re looking at

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

206 Board-Ship Friendships. sequences may be dangerous for a married woman. Slander travels quickly, and the husband, in the Punjab or Hong-Kong, will hear of his wife’s doings afloat. Quarrels, misunderstandings, and a separa- tion follow, which make rather a high price in all to pay for a mere board-ship frendship. Women can hardly be too discreet in their behaviour at sea, if travelling alone. MHastily-formed friendships at starting may put them into the most awkward positions afterwards. And this axiom is as applicable to friendships contracted with their own as with the other sex. An everyday character on board ship is the nice, well-dressed, lady-like woman who is all smiles and sweetness at first, all frowns and acid at last. She is, perhaps, one of those unphilosophic persons who are ever in pursuit of pleasure, never of content, and in that case she will lead the unwary of her sex into the social perils of a clique, of which she has probably constituted herself the ruling queen. Now, clique friendship, that is to say, the friendship of a “ set,” is never to be relied upon on board ship. The characters of the persons composing the set are unknown to each other, and it is almost impossible under such a disadvantage that the harmony of the little circle can last. The swans begin to think one another geese, and once this occurs there is an end of the clique. The passengers who have held aloof from it, or have not been invited to join, now find it is their turn to laugh, and the lady who has allowed herself to be drawn into the clique has the shame of being justly commiserated by persons on whom she has turned the cold shoulder. A reserved person, however, can seldom attain popularity on a voyage. A sea voyage, in these days of swift steamers, is not long enough to permit of his being understood. On the contrary, the prudent reserve of a person who does not wish to be entangled in undesirable friendships or intrigues, is very often set down to anything but the night reason. All sorts of mistakes—especially those of identity—are lrable to occur on board great ocean steamships which take in stray passengers at different ports. Thus, it has come to pass that a very reserved person has been mistaken for the son of the hangman, because “he never spoke to nobody.” And a lady who kept herself very much to herself, which was all the more aggravating because she was pretty, once travelled quite unconsciously over the Indian Seas as a Russian spy, when she was in fact only the wife of an English naval officer. There are people who hold the opinion that when they are at sea everything is lawful to them in a social sense. It is needless to say that though they travel first-class, they are not first-class people. They seem to think that the sea sweeps away all social distinctions, and if there is any great personage on board they will go up and address him as coolly as if he were only a brother bagman. It is dreadful to have the distasteful friendship of one of this class forced upon one— especially if suffering from ma/ de mer. Often it is a woman, in the CONNEC MOOOKS.CO @ im