Page:Floating City (1904).djvu/116

 "Ocean Times" was a daily newspaper, political, commercial, and literary, which certain passengers had started for the requirements on board. Americans and English took to this sort of pastime; they wrote out their sheet during the day; and let me say, that if the editors were not particular, as to the quality of their articles, their readers were not more so. They were content with little, even with "not enough."

This number for the 1st of April contained a "Great Eastern" leader—tame enough, on general politics—also various facts quite uninteresting to a Frenchman; articles on the money-markets, not particularly comic; curious telegrams, and some rather insipid home news. After all this kind of fun is only amusing to those who make it. The Honourable Mac Alpine, a dogmatical American, read, with earnest gravity, some rather dull lucubrations, which were received by his audience with great applause. He finished his reading with the following news:—

"It is announced that President Johnson has resigned in favour of General Grant."

"It is said that Fernando Cortez is going to attack the Emperor Napoleon the Third, piratically, out of revenge for the latter's conquest of Mexico."

"We are told for a certainty that Pope Pius IX. has designated the Prince Imperial as his successor."

When the "Ocean Times" had been sufficiently