Herman Melville Moby Dick, Chapter 20 1851 Of the nearly six hundred first-class passengers, roughly four dozen made it to dinner. Even Mary stayed in her room. Besides an elderly aunt down the table, Louise knew only one other person. Pia Montebello. who herself didn't arrive till the cheese and fruit course at the end of the meal. She looked, though, as if she too should have stayed in bed. She was sheet-white, her eyes puffy and red despite a good deal of makeup to disguise the face. Nonetheless, she joined Louise's far end of the group, which included a financier, a partner in Standard Oil (not Rockefeller but the other one who had something to do with railroads), and a society matron who had brought a little boy from across the hall to dinner, his parents having fallen victims to the storm's unrest. Outside the long windows of the dining saloon, rain poured so hard upon the ocean, Louise had trouble hearing the man beside her (a young doctor and groom portion of newlyweds on their honeymoon).
