The Argosy — page 225: what you’re looking at

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

208 Board-Ship Friendships. ship, it may be accepted as real and lasting for all time ; but when we consider how very many more nasty people there are in the world than nice, and the long odds against ever getting one of the latter for a cabin companion, it is not so very surprising if the very last people to enjoy board-ship friendship are those boxed up together. Every- one who has had the misfortune to go a long voyage with an uncon- genial cabin chum must remember his own relief when he got near the end of the journey. This is the time when board-ship friendships are seen at their worst. The pretty woman, but old traveller, who has been so kind ‘during the voyage as to let you sit next her at table, and order, and pay for, her champagne, is now so much engaged with her packing, and her letters, and her telegrams, as to find barely time to bid you Good-morning. The young lady whose board-ship friendship with the chief officer has been so much commented upon during the voyage, now discovers to her dismay that the deceiving sailor is a married man. Only the reserved person brightens up, and grows genial with the near termination of the voyage. There is no longer much danger of anyone presuming on /zs friendship to ask the favour of a small loan, and so he is at liberty to relax a little in view of his speedy separation from his fellow-passengers. Less selfish persons, chiefly females, cling with desperate tenacity to the hope, a delusive one, that the mushroom friendships they have made on board will be carried on to Liverpool, London, or wherever they are all bound. ‘The very sanguine among them go so far even as to ask the addresses of their friends on shore, but are met with evasive answers. ‘The fact is that there is a lamentable tendency of weak human nature to shake off board-ship friendships as soon as it touches terra firma again. It is only the hardened traveller, however, who can actually cut his whilom cabin chum at the railway station, and ignore his presence at the table d’hote, should they find them- selves at the same hotel. Inexperienced persons—especially those from the Colonies—cling affectionately to one another to the very last, and make arrangements to go up to town in the same train, to live in the same hotel, and what not. But it is utterly impracticable, for all this, to expect that fungus thing, board-ship friendship, to flourish anywhere but on board ship. The very phrase, “That? Oh, that is someone who came over with me in the Leviathan,” is enough to indicate the fact. And though it is not denied that friendships have been begun on board ship that have lasted a life-time, such intimacies are the exception to the rule, for “Out of sight out of mind” is a maxim which is almost universally applicable to them. i. Be CORMIECLIOO KS. (EC)