morning, being up earlier than usual and wandering about on strange,
inclosed decks unfamiliar to my feet, I beheld astonishing unsuspected
populations of men and women--crowds of them--a healthy, powerful,
prosperous, independent, somewhat stern and disdainful multitude, it
seemed to me. Those muscular, striding girls in caps and shawls would
not yield an inch to me in their promenade; they brushed strongly and
carelessly past me; had I been a ghost they would have walked through
me. They were, and had been, all living--eating and sleeping--somewhere
within the vessel, and I had not imagined it! It is true that some ass
in the saloon had already calculated for my benefit that there were
"three thousand _souls_ on board!" (The solemn use of the word "souls"
in this connection by a passenger should stamp a man forever.) But such
numerical statements do not really arouse the imagination. I had to see
with my eyes. And I did see with my eyes. That afternoon a high officer
of the ship, spiriting me away from the polite flirtations and pastimes
of the upper decks, carried me down to more exciting scenes. And I saw a
whole string of young women inoculated against smallpox, under the
interested gaze of a crowd of men ranged on a convenient staircase. And
a little later I saw a whole string of men inoculated against smallpox,
under the interested gaze of a crowd of young women ranged on a
convenient staircase.

"They're having their sweet revenge," said the high officer, indicating
the young women. He was an epigrammatic and terse speaker. When I
reflected aloud upon the order and discipline of service which was
necessary to maintain more than a thousand roughish persons in idleness,
cleanliness, health, peace, and content, in the inelastic forward spaces
of the ship, he said with a certain grimness: "Everything has to be
screwed up as tight as you can screw it. And you must keep to the
round. What you do to-day you must do to-morrow. But what you don't do