wholesome ablution, are extremely negligent and filthy; and I
strongly incline to the belief that a considerable amount of
illness is referable to this cause.
We are to be on board the Messenger three days: arriving at
Cincinnati (barring accidents) on Monday morning. There are three
meals a day. Breakfast at seven, dinner at half-past twelve,
supper about six. At each, there are a great many small dishes and
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Dickens, Charles – American Notes for General Circulation
plates upon the table, with very little in them; so that although
there is every appearance of a mighty ‘spread,’ there is seldom
really more than a joint: except for those who fancy slices of
beet-root, shreds of dried beef, complicated entanglements of
yellow pickle; maize, Indian corn, apple-sauce, and pumpkin.
Some people fancy all these little dainties together (and sweet
preserves beside), by way of relish to their roast pig. They are
generally those dyspeptic ladies and gentlemen who eat unheard-of
quantities of hot corn bread (almost as good for the digestion as a
kneaded pin-cushion), for breakfast, and for supper. Those who do
not observe this custom, and who help themselves several times
instead, usually suck their knives and forks meditatively, until
they have decided what to take next: then pull them out of their
mouths: put them in the dish; help themselves; and fall to work
again. At dinner, there is nothing to drink upon the table, but
great jugs full of cold water. Nobody says anything, at any meal,
to anybody. All the passengers are very dismal, and seem to have
tremendous secrets weighing on their minds. There is no
conversation, no laughter, no cheerfulness, no sociality, except in
spitting; and that is done in silent fellowship round the stove,
when the meal is over. Every man sits down, dull and languid;
swallows his fare as if breakfasts, dinners, and suppers, were
necessities of nature never to be coupled with recreation or
enjoyment; and having bolted his food in a gloomy silence, bolts
himself, in the same state. But for these animal observances, you
might suppose the whole male portion of the company to be the
melancholy ghosts of departed book-keepers, who had fallen dead at
the desk: such is their weary air of business and calculation.
Undertakers on duty would be sprightly beside them; and a collation
of funeral-baked meats, in comparison with these meals, would be a
sparkling festivity.
The people are all alike, too. There is no diversity of character.
They travel about on the same errands, say and do the same things
in exactly the same manner, and follow in the same dull cheerless
round. All down the long table, there is scarcely a man who is in
anything different from his neighbour. It is quite a relief to
have, sitting opposite, that little girl of fifteen with the
loquacious chin: who, to do her justice, acts up to it, and fully
identifies nature’s handwriting, for of all the small chatterboxes
that ever invaded the repose of drowsy ladies’ cabin, she is the
first and foremost. The beautiful girl, who sits a little beyond
her – farther down the table there – married the young man with the
dark whiskers, who sits beyond HER, only last month. They are
going to settle in the very Far West, where he has lived four
years, but where she has never been. They were both overturned in
a stage-coach the other day (a bad omen anywhere else, where
overturns are not so common), and his head, which bears the marks
of a recent wound, is bound up still. She was hurt too, at the
same time, and lay insensible for some days; bright as her eyes
are, now.
Further down still, sits a man who is going some miles beyond their
place of destination, to ‘improve’ a newly-discovered copper mine.
He carries the village – that is to be – with him: a few frame
cottages, and an apparatus for smelting the copper. He carries its
people too. They are partly American and partly Irish, and herd
together on the lower deck; where they amused themselves last
evening till the night was pretty far advanced, by alternately