Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III WHICH CONTAINS A TROLLY TRIP AND A LAUNDRY GRIEVANCE NLAND steamers are the pariahs of the ship world. They are neither fish, flesh nor fowl. River, lake and bay steamers, sound and harbour steamers, channel and canal steamers they are all alike, with their excursion manner, their cramped deck space, their red carpets and velvet lounge chairs, their piles of folded and dingy camp stools, and, in America, their horribly sleepy coloured stewards in crumpled white coats. When the porter at the Rennert advised us to go on to Norfolk by water, we knew what we were being let in for. But we bought our tickets because we hoped that the fog would lift before morning and disclose the pageant of Norfolk harbour and Hampton Roads. Vain hope! Smug and credulous Nauthoress and Nillustra- tor! We should not have expected miracles of a Chesapeake Bay fog! We permitted the positive porter to transferus from the hotel to the dock while we were still under the spell of his eloquence and before we could convince him, or each other, that it was bound to be a foggy night and that we might just as well wait another day. It was too late to turn back when the taxi drew up at the dock, for an army of stewards fell on our luggage (one for each suitcase and two for each trunk), and escorted us to our staterooms. Allan tipped six of them for service and eight more for moral assistance, and after reading the framed warnings to lock the door, to watch out for thieves, to look under the berth for life-preservers, and to turn out the light, we went on deck, profoundly depressed. The interior of an excursion steamer always reminds me of a varnished and upholstered columbarium. The restless passengers pop in and out of their tomb doors like lively ghosts or sit, first a passenger, then a nicke...