Letters and Manuscripts — Volume 4 (1883 - 1886)

Lt 103, 1886

White, J. E.; White, Emma

Cologne, Germany

July 27, 1886

Previously unpublished.

Dear Children:

We left Copenhagen yesterday morning and after riding two hours took the boat at Corsia for Kiel. Usually we have only five and one-half hours’ ride, but on this occasion the boat labored against a head wind which delayed us more than one hour. The water was rough, several were sick. I came so near being sick, I was very miserable all the way. Sarah was obliged to lie down and did not sit up during the eight hours’ ride. 4LtMs, Lt 103, 1886, par. 1

We were surprised to find upon the boat so many English-speaking people. W. C. White generally writes upon the calligraph on the boat and sometimes on the cars. While he was writing, there was quite a crowd of officials and gentlemen and ladies to see the letter-writing machine. One man and woman thought it was a knitting machine. After the wonder was over, then some had something else to do. One gentleman with a good-looking countenance, but a very red face, began to smoke, then another and another. After he had regaled himself with tobacco to his heart’s content, then he called for refreshments. Beer was brought and large slices of fat pork which he and his lady devoured greedily. But we had a very strong wind and the water was some rough and soon the woman lay down on a platform on upper deck. I was sleepy and went below. I had been up since three o’clock in the morning, and after having a nap, I awoke just as near being fully seasick as I ever could be [and] not carry it out. 4LtMs, Lt 103, 1886, par. 2

The lower saloon was musty, no sun could reach it. It was ventilated from above. I was glad to get up on deck by the side of W. C. White. Was rather giddy headed, he confessed. The wind blew strongly, but I would not venture to go below. The lady who ate her pork was very sick, white as a corpse she looked, but her good-looking, red faced husband was smoking. She motioned him that his cigar made her sick. He turned his head a little and smoked away vigorously a though his salvation depended on activity, poisoning the atmosphere about him. He had to take his wife below, yet he held firmly his cigar. There she lay retching and vomiting, crying and moaning, but he came on deck to finish his smoking. 4LtMs, Lt 103, 1886, par. 3

We were not very level headed when we arrived at Kiel. We had two hours to wait and the waiting room was large, but filled with tables, and around the tables soon were seated young men and young women and entire families, sitting at these tables with foaming mugs of beer, and each goes through the performance of clicking the mugs together before drinking. They did not seem, many of them, to call for bread or solid food, but the beer which was placed to the lips of little children and women just as freely as the red-faced, beer-drinking husbands and fathers. Then next came the cigars; smoking, such earnest smoking and continuous, I never witnessed before. The husband and father would send forth clouds of poisonous incense upon the air, polluting it, while his family was around him and he would puff his smoke directly in their faces. 4LtMs, Lt 103, 1886, par. 4