ss attractive spot,
the cabin of the indefatigable interpreter. I have seen people packed
into this space like herrings in a barrel, and many merry evenings
prolonged there until five bells, when the lights were ruthlessly
extinguished and all must go to roost.

It had been rumoured since Friday that there was a fiddler aboard, who
lay sick and unmelodious in Steerage No. 1; and on the Monday forenoon,
as I came down the companion, I was saluted by something in Strathspey
time. A white-faced Orpheus was cheerily playing to an audience of
white-faced women. It was as much as he could do to play, and some of
his hearers were scarce able to sit; yet they had crawled from their
bunks at the first experimental flourish, and found better than medicine
in the music. Some of the heaviest heads began to nod in time, and a
degree of animation looked from some of the palest eyes. Humanly
speaking, it is a more important matter to play the fiddle, even badly,
than to write huge works upon recondite subjects. What could Mr. Darwin
have done for these sick women? But this fellow scraped away; and the
world was positively a better place for all who heard him. We have yet
to understand the economical value of these mere accomplishments. I
told the fiddler he was a happy man, carrying happiness about with him
in his fiddle-case, and he seemed alive to the fact.

"It is a privilege," I said. He thought a while upon the word, turning
it over in his Scots head, and then answered with conviction, "Yes, a
privilege."

That night I was summoned by "Merrily danced the Quaker's Wife" into the
companion of Steerage No. 4 and 5. This was, properly speaking, but a
strip across a deck-house, lit by a sickly lantern which swung to and
fro with the motion of the ship. Through the open slide-door we had a
glimpse of the grey night sea, with patches of phosphorescent foam
flying, swift as birds, into the wake, and the horizon rising and
falling as the vessel rolled to the wind. In the centre the companion
ladder plunged down sheerly like an open pit. Below, on the first
landing, and lighted by another lamp, lads and lasses danced, not more
than three at a time for lack of space, in jigs and reels, and
hornpipes. Above, on either side, there was a recess railed with iron,
perhaps two feet wide and four long, which stood for orchestra and seats
of honour. In the one balcony, five slatternly Irish lasses sat woven in
a comely group. In the other was po