The water may be cold, but you won't mind
it very long. And one word more: Don't gurgle; somebody might hear you
and stupidly spoil all by crying out, "Man overboard!"

If you decide to "end it all"--which, I believe, is the expression
adopted by the best authorities--there is one humane suggestion I would
make. End it before the ship's concert. There's absolutely no use in
just living on and saying you won't go to the concert, for that is just
what everybody else says, yet everybody always goes. There is a horrible
fascination about a ship's concert, something hypnotic that draws you,
very much against your word and will. I always think of it as a sort of
awful antidote that is given to the passengers to counteract the poison
of the steady boredom of the ship. It is an event in the voyage, just as
the appendicitis operation is an event in life. And as the only people
who enjoy the appendicitis operation are the doctors, the only people
who go gaily to the concert are those who go there to perform.

The chairman, for instance, enjoys it very much. He is a peer, a member
of Parliament, or the United States consul at Shepherd's Bush, and he
begins his speech by stating that the proceeds of the entertainment will
be equally divided between the Seamen's Funds of New York and Liverpool,
or somewhere else. It is then necessary to explain what seamen are. They
are "these brave, watchful fellows who have our lives in their hands."
At this, the chairman looks at the table stewards, who stand about the
walls with their napkins and their middle-class grins; brave, watchful
fellows trying to look as if they really held our lives and not our
dinners in their hands.

His duty to the Seamen's Funds accomplished, the chairman passes on to
other things. Just what they are depends upon his nationality. If he be
a British chairman, his speech will be composed of throaty sounds,
coughs, clearings of the throat, and mumblings, through which the quick
ear of the auditor may catch the following remarks:

"As a matter of fact----"

"Don't you know----"

"I mean to say----"

Now and then there comes a British chairman with a wide oratorical
scope. In his case these additional expressions will occur:

"After all, now----"

"You Americans----"

"Eh, what?"

With the American chairman it is different. You understand his speech
and only wish you didn't. After telling you that "it is a great
pleasure," he continues through allusions t