eir hearts, they'll sit on that boat and eat
all day!"

And I echoed her wish with a keen delight. God bless their hearts and
stomachs. Oh, hungry vigorous Yankee land, so mightily young--eat on,
eat on!

And the land ate on.

* * * * *

My work here rose to a climax a week or two before Christmas, when the
newest liner of them all pulled off a new world's record for speed. With
the company's publicity man, who had become a friend of mine, I went on
the health officer's tug down the Bay to meet her, on the coldest,
darkest night I've ever known on water. Shortly after nine o'clock the
big boat's light gleamed off the Hook and she bore down upon us. She
came close, slowed down and towered by our side, weird as a ghost with
snow and ice in glimmering sheets on her steel sides. She did not stop.
We caught a rope ladder and scrambled up, and at once we felt her
speeding on.

And she was indeed a story that night. Bellowing hoarsely now in warning
to all small craft to get out of her way, she was rushing into the
harbor. Suddenly she slowed again, and three dark mail tugs ranged
alongside, and through canvas chutes four thousand sacks of Christmas
mail began to pour down while the ship moved on. Up her other side came
climbing gangs of men who began to make ready her winches and open up
her hatches. Now we were moving in close to the pier, with a whole fleet
of tugs around us. Faint shouts rose in the zero night, toots and sharp
whistles. One of the gang-planks was down at last and two hundred
dockers came up on the run. Off went the passengers and the luggage,
reporters skurrying through the crowds. But the ship did not rest. For
she was to sail again the next night. This was to be a world's record
for speed!

All night long the work went on, and I watched it from a deck above,
going in now and then for food and hot drinks. On her dock side,
forward, Christmas boxes, bales and packages were being whipped up out
of her hold to the rattle of her winches. One sharp whistle and up they
shot into the air till they swung some seventy feet above. Another
whistle and down they whirled into the dockshed far below from which a
blaze of light poured up. At the same time she was coaling. Along the
black wall of her other side, as I peered over the rail above, I saw far
below a row of barges crowded with Italians. Powerful lights swung over
their heads in the freezing wind, swung above black coal h