The Purser's Story

Robert Barr was born in Scotland but when he was four his family moved to Canada. Barr's works are often based on his own experience and reveal his personality: straightforward and even cruel at first sight but very kind when you take a serious look. One day one man who was a purser came to me and told me a story which would be fit to a magazine article. The purser had a room on the steamship. When the steamship arrived on a halfway to a port of Queenstown there was a huge queue of people who wanted to get into a steamship. Two officers stood at each side of the gangway and checked the tickets of the passengers. The purser stood on the board of the steamship and watched their coming aboard. But suddenly there was a fuss and a jam.