ty degrees in the cabin
cannot fail to produce bad effects on the health.

Travelling by the easterly route you meet the sun, which causes each
day to be shortened. By the westerly route you go with the sun, which
causes each day to be lengthened.

During the journey round the world the aggregate of these shortenings
or lengthenings will amount to twenty-four hours, so that on arriving
again in England by the easterly route you will have gained a day, and
instead of its being Wednesday, as you might think, it would be
Tuesday, wherefore you would be obliged to have two Wednesdays in one
week. By the westerly route, on the contrary, you would lose a day, so
that returning on a Wednesday by your reckoning you would find
everyone else calling it Thursday, and the following morning you would
be obliged to recognise as Friday.

To avoid such confusion the date is always regulated when crossing the
Pacific.

Going east, the captain notifies that there will be two consecutive
Mondays, or two Thursdays, as the case be, in order to use up the
extra day.

Going west, on the other hand, one of the days in a week must be
omitted, there being no time for it if you are to arrive in port on
the proper date.

A common story told in this connection is that on a certain voyage
from Vancouver to Hongkong some missionary passengers settled to hold
service in the saloon at 10:30 a.m. on Sunday, and posted up a notice
to that effect in the usual place at the head of the saloon stairs,
but omitted to previously consult the captain or ask his permission.

The captain, having no desire to be ignored, even unintentionally,
aboard his own ship, quietly regulated dates, the passengers next
morning finding an official notice posted up immediately over that of
the missionaries, saying that it would be Sunday until 10 a.m., after
which it would be Monday, so that missionaries, Sunday and divine
service were all simultaneously suppressed.

The most comfortable and the most restful travelling in the world that
I know of is on board the large river steamers running up the Yangtse
for six hundred miles from Shanghai to Hankow, and then transhipping
to somewhat smaller vessels, for the additional four hundred miles to
Ichang.

Scrupulously clean, good table, jovial captains, excellent Chinese
stewards, electric light, luxurious saloons, state-rooms double the
size of cabins on even the finest ocean liners, few passengers, no
noise and no sea-