olitary traveller, going down the winding staircase, does not pause
on the first floor, for that leads forward to private apartments, and
aft to a writing-room and library; nor on the second or third, for the
entrance-halls there lead to state-rooms; but on the fourth floor down
he steps out into a reception room extending to the full width of the
ship and of almost as great a length. Nothing of the sea's restrictions
or discomforts here! Before him is an Aubusson tapestry, copied from
one of the "Chasses de Guise" series of the National Garde-Meuble; and
in this wide apartment there is a sense, not of the cramping necessities
of the sea, but of all the leisured and spacious life of the land.
Through this luxurious emptiness the imposing dignities of the
dining-saloon are reached; and here indeed all the insolent splendour of
the ship is centred. It was by far the largest room that had ever
floated upon the seas, and by far the largest room that had ever moved
from one place to another. The seventeenth-century style of Hatfield and
Haddon Hall had been translated from the sombreness of oak to the
lightness of enamelled white. Artist-plasterers had moulded the lovely
Jacobean ceiling, artist-stainers had designed and made the great
painted windows through which the bright sea-sunlight was filtered; and
when the whole company of three hundred was seated at the tables it
seemed not much more than half full, since more than half as many again
could find places there without the least crowding. There, amid the
strains of gay music and the hum of conversation and the subdued clatter
of silver and china and the low throb of the engines, the gay company
takes its first meal on the _Titanic_. And as our traveller sits there
solitary, he remembers that this is not all, that in another great
saloon farther off another three hundred passengers of the second-class
are also at lunch, and that on the floor below him another seven hundred
of the third-class, and in various other places near a thousand of the
crew, are also having their meal. All a little oppressive to read about,
perhaps, but wonderful to contrive and arrange. It is what everyone is
thinking and talking about who sits at those luxurious tables, loaded
not with sea-fare, but with dainty and perishable provisions for which
half the countries of the world have been laid under tribute.

The music flows on and the smooth service accomplishes itself; Honour
and Glory, high up