saloon's furnishings.

Stefan Byrd, taking in the scene as he balanced a precarious way to his
seat, felt every hypercritical sense rising in revolt. Even the prosaic
but admirably efficient table utensils repelled him. "They are so useful,
so abominably enduring," he thought. The mahogany trimmings of doors and
columns seemed to announce from every overpolished surface a pompous
self-sufficiency. Each table proclaimed the aesthetic level of the second
class through the lifeless leaves of a rubber plant and two imitation
cut-glass dishes of tough fruit. The stewards, casually hovering, lacked
the democracy which might have humanized the steerage as much as the
civility which would have oiled the workings of the first cabin. Byrd
resented their ministrations as he did the heavy English dishes of the
bill of fare. There were no Continental passengers near him. He had left
the dear French tongue behind, and his ears, homesick already, shrank
equally from the see-saw Lancashire of the stewards and the monotonous
rasp of returning Americans.

Byrd's left hand neighbor, a clergyman of uncertain denomination, had
tried vainly for several minutes to attract his attention by clearing his
throat, passing the salt, and making measured requests for water, bread,
and the like.

"I presume, sir," he at last inquired loudly, "that you are an American,
and as glad as I am to be returning to our country?"

"No, sir," retorted Byrd, favoring his questioner with a withering stare,
"I am a Bohemian, and damnably sorry that I ever have to see America
again."