hat
when passing some ladies on my way down to dinner, they feebly
endeavouring to eat a biscuit or two and drink a glass of champagne, one
turned her pallid face to another and murmured, "I _am_ so glad that
energetic little man has been obliged to give in at last!"

They ought to have seen me at the table half-an-hour afterwards, that's
all!

That reminds me of my friend poor Alfred Cellier, who was wintering in
the South once at the same time as we were there for my wife's health. I
was returning from a meet one day, hot and mud-bespattered, when I met
the talented musician walking feebly along in the sun with his furs on.
He called to me to stop, which I did, and his dreamy, good-natured face
assumed a most malevolent expression as he hissed at me, "I hate you! I
hate you! _You look so beastly healthy._"

Even on board ship the American still clings to his iced water, but some
think it is time to train for the European habit of taking wine at
dinner. I noticed a Westerner who with his wife was sitting down for
probably the first time to _table d'hote_. He took up the wine list, and
went right through the sherries, hocks, clarets, champagnes, and even
liqueurs. Now at the end of the wine lists on these vessels there is
appended a list of various mineral waters. The names of these (or was it
the price?) seemed to take the fancy of the American. "I guess this
_Hunyadi Janos_ sounds well--I calculate if you put a bottle of that on
ice it'll do us just right."

Sailors are superstitious. Some will, or used to, rob themselves of the
necessities of life to purchase a baby's "caul," and wear it around
their neck as a charm.

To sail out of harbour on a Friday was unheard of. In these days of
science, days in which steam has driven the old frigate-rigged sailing
ships from the seas, one would have thought that superstition would have
vanished with the old hulks, and that in the floating palaces crossing
the Atlantic, in which longshoremen take the place of old-time sea-dogs,
charms and omens would have lost their power. Yet sailor superstitions
are as hard to kill even in these gorgeous up-to-date liners as it is to
exterminate the rats in the hold or the cockroaches in the larder.

The last journey I made to America was in the favourite liner the
_Germanic_. I was chatting to one of the crew, an old salt, the day we
left Queenstown; he was looking out to sea; his brow was clouded, and he
shook his head mournfully.