I Forbid the Banns! — page 113: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER XVI. ON THE VOICE THAT BREATHED O’ER EDEN, HE steamer slid into the Bay of Biscay and slid through that watery area as though it had been as remote from disturbance as an ordinary mill pond. A dead calm caused the waters to slumber peacefully ; and the speed of the vessel was never less than fifteen knots. The playful demons of the bay, whose pranks are usually experienced by passengers who may fondly expect to sit at the tables without having their plates protected by that mahogany framework known as “ fiddles,’’ seemed to have become suddenly melancholic. The tables were not turned into switch-back railways in miniature. The vol-au-vent was not sent sliding into any lap. The likeness to a pro- jectile of an ancient type, which was suggested by the appearance of the plum pudding, was not more deeply impressed upon the passengers by the motion of the com- estible, however the illusion may have been strengthened by partaking of a portion of it. The Bay of Biscay, which had been occasionally referred to by the passengers with bated breath, was found to be nothing particular after all. Those who had been most awe-stricken in alluding to it were now quite jocular on the subject of its terrors. They alluded to it in familiar, not to say flippant, terms. The Bay of Biscay was to them what the Lord Chief Justice of England is to the attendant in the Turkish bath which his lordship may frequent. People who scoff at the Bay of Biscay will scoff at any- thing, just as those who sneer at Mesopotamia cannot possibly revere any principle. 103 ~~ CORNIECLOOKS (E(0)