With the almost immediate transference
of the original transatlantic steamship interests from Bristol,
Liverpool became the only place where you could arrive. American
lines, long erased from the seas, and the Inman line, the Cunard
line, the White Star line, and the rest, would land you nowhere
else. Then heretical steamers began to land you at Glasgow; worse
schismatics carried you to Southampton; there were heterodox
craft that touched at Plymouth, and now great swelling agnostics
bring you to London itself. Still, Liverpool remains the greatest
port of entry for our probationers, who are bound out to the
hotels and railroad companies of all Europe till they have
morally paid back their fare. The superstition that if you go in
a Cunarder you can sleep on both ears is no longer so exclusive
as it once was; yet the Cunarder continues an ark of safety for
the timid and despairing, and the cooking is so much better than
it used to be that if in contravention of the old Cunard rule
against a passenger's being carried overboard you do go down, you
may be reasonably sure of having eaten something that the
wallowing sea-monsters will like in you.
Pages:
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27