Chapter 9—Characters Among the Passengers
In spite of the ship’s disorderly conduct, life on board was becoming organized, for which the AngloSaxon nothing is more simple. The steamboat is his street and his house for the time being; the Frenchman, on the contrary, always looks like a traveler.
When the weather was favorable, the boulevards were thronged with promenaders, who managed to maintain the perpendicular, in spite of the ship’s motion, but with the peculiar gyrations of tipsy men.
When the passengers did not go on deck, they remained either in their private sitting-rooms or in the grand saloon, and then began the noisy discords of pianos, all played at the same time, which, however, seemed not to affect Saxon ears in the least. Among these amateurs, I noticed a tall, bony woman
