The
state-rooms were sufficiently roomy, and each had two berths, one
above the other. These berths, to be sure, were so exceedingly
narrow as to be insufficient for more than one person; still, I
could not comprehend why there were THREE staterooms for these four
persons. I was, just at that epoch, in one of those moody frames
of mind which make a man abnormally inquisitive about trifles: and
I confess, with shame, that I busied myself in a variety of ill-
bred and preposterous conjectures about this matter of the
supernumerary stateroom. It was no business of mine, to be sure,
but with none the less pertinacity did I occupy myself in attempts
to resolve the enigma. At last I reached a conclusion which
wrought in me great wonder why I had not arrived at it before. "It
is a servant of course," I said; "what a fool I am, not sooner to
have thought of so obvious a solution!" And then I again repaired
to the list--but here I saw distinctly that NO servant was to come
with the party, although, in fact, it had been the original design
to bring one--for the words "and servant" had been first written
and then over-scored.
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