"That's a very nice gentleman." This information, together with the fact
that he was a widower and a regular passenger twice a year by the ship,
was communicated to me suddenly by our captain. At intervals through the
day he would pop out of the chart-room and offer me short snatches of
conversation. He owned a simple soul and a not very entertaining mind,
and he was without malice and, I believe, quite unconsciously, a warm
Germanophil. And no wonder! As he told me himself, he had been fifteen
years on that run, and spent almost as much of his life in Hamburg as in
Harwich.
"Wonderful people they are," he repeated from time to time, without
entering into particulars, but with many nods of sagacious obstinacy.
What he knew of them, I suppose, were a few commercial travellers and
small merchants, most likely. But I had observed long before that German
genius has a hypnotising power over half-baked souls and half-lighted
minds. There is an immense force of suggestion in highly organised
mediocrity. Had it not hypnotised half Europe? My man was very much
under the spell of German excellence. On the other hand, his contempt
for France was equally general and unbounded.
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