In the "Autocrat" we recognize the dingy wall-paper of the dining-room,
the well-worn furniture, the cracked water-pitcher, and the slight aroma
of previous repasts; but we soon forget this unattractive background, for
the scene is full of genuine human life. The men and women who congregate
there appear for what they really are. They wear no mental masks and
other disguises like the people we meet at fashionable entertainments;
and each acts himself or herself. Boarding-houses, sanitariums, and sea
voyages are the places to study human nature. When a man is half seasick
the old original Adam shows forth in him through all the wrappings of
education, social restraint, imitation and attempts at self-improvement,
with which he has covered it over for so many years. Once on a Cunard
steamship I heard an architect from San Francisco tell the story of the
hoop-snake, which takes its tail in its teeth and rolls over the prairies
at a speed equal to any express train. He evidently believed the story
himself, and as I looked round on the company I saw that they all
believed it, too, excepting Captain Martyn, who gave me a sly look from
the corner of his eye. "Rocked in the cradle of the deep," they had
become like children again, and were ready to credit anything that was
told in a confident manner.
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