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172 their ship, and you are not merely one of a great mob of passengers as in a crowded fast liner. The officers on a popular big and swift boat are prone to be a trifle snobbish. This is especially the case on the particular liner which for the moment stands at the top&mdash;a steamer that has broken the record, and is considered the best boat in the Atlantic service for the time being. If you get a word from the captain of such a boat you may consider yourself a peculiarly honored individual, and even the purser is apt to answer you very shortly, and make you feel you are but a worm of the dust, even though you have paid a very large price for your stateroom. On The Tub there was nothing of this. The officers were genial good fellows, who admitted their boat was not the fastest on the Atlantic, although at one time she had been; but if The Tub never broke the record, on the other hand, she never broke a shaft, and so things were evened up. She wallowed her way across the Atlantic in a leisurely manner, and there was no feverish anxiety among the passengers, when they reached Queenstown, to find whether the rival boat had got in ahead of us or not.

Everybody on board The Tub knew that any vessel which started from New York the same day would reach Queenstown before us. In fact, a