ven in a population like this--and I imagine that the
standard of wealth is higher in the first-class population of an
Atlantic liner than in any other group of people in the world. There
were four men there who represented between them the possession of some
seventy millions of money--John Jacob Astor, Isidore Straus, George D.
Widener, and Benjamin Guggenheim their names; and it was said that
there were twenty who represented a fortune of a hundred millions
between them--an interesting, though not an important, fact. But there
were people there conspicuous for other things than their wealth. There
was William T. Stead who, without any wealth at all, had in some
respects changed the thought and social destinies of England; there was
Francis Millet, a painter who had attained to eminence in America and
who had recently been head of the American Academy in Rome; there was an
eminent motorist, an eminent master of hounds, an eminent baseball
player, an eminent poloist; and there was Major Archibald Butt, the
satellite and right-hand man of Presidents, who had had a typical
American career as newspaper correspondent, secretary, soldier,
diplomatist, aide-de-camp, and novelist. There was Mr. Ismay, the most
important man on the ship, for as head of the White Star Line he was
practically her owner. He was accompanying her on her maiden voyage with
no other object than to find out wherein she was defective, so that her
younger sister might excel her. He may be said to have accomplished his
purpose; and of all the people who took this voyage he is probably the
only one who succeeded in what he set out to do. There was Mr. Andrews,
one of the designers of the _Titanic_, who had come to enjoy the triumph
of his giant child; and there were several others also, denizens of that
great forest of iron in Belfast Lough, who had seen her and known her
when she was a cathedral building within a scaffolding, the most solid
and immovable thing in their world. These, the friends and companions of
her infancy, had come too, we may suppose, to admire her in her moment
of success, as the nurses and humble attendants of some beautiful girl
will watch in a body her departure for the triumphs of her first ball.

Of all this throng I had personal knowledge of only two; and yet the two
happened to be extremely typical. I knew John Jacob Astor a few years
ago in New York, when he sometimes seemed like a polite skeleton in his
own gay house; an able