of it back. Nobody said anything, and the captain went away.
I think he is becoming disheartened . . . . Also, to be fair, there
is another word of praise due to this ship's library: it contains no copy
of the Vicar of Wakefield, that strange menagerie of complacent
hypocrites and idiots, of theatrical cheap-john heroes and heroines, who
are always showing off, of bad people who are not interesting, and good
people who are fatiguing. A singular book. Not a sincere line in it,
and not a character that invites respect; a book which is one long
waste-pipe discharge of goody-goody puerilities and dreary moralities; a
book which is full of pathos which revolts, and humor which grieves the
heart. There are few things in literature that are more piteous, more
pathetic, than the celebrated "humorous" incident of Moses and the
spectacles. Jane Austen's books, too, are absent from this library. Just
that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library
that hadn't a book in it.

Customs in tropic seas. At 5 in the morning they pipe to wash down the
decks, and at once the ladies who are sleeping there turn out and they
and their beds go below. Then one after another the men come up from the
bath in their pyjamas, and walk the decks an hour or two with bare legs
and bare feet. Coffee and fruit served. The ship cat and her kitten now
appear and get about their toilets; next the barber comes and flays us on
the breezy deck. Breakfast at 9.30, and the day begins. I do not know
how a day could be more reposeful: no motion; a level blue sea; nothing
in sight from horizon to horizon; the speed of the ship furnishes a
cooling breeze; there is no mail to read and answer; no newspapers to
excite you; no telegrams to fret you or fright you--the world is far, far
away; it has ceased to exist for you--seemed a fading dream, along in the
first days; has dissolved to an unreality now; it is gone from your mind
with all its businesses and ambitions, its prosperities and disasters,
its exultations and despairs, its joys and griefs and cares and worries.
They are no concern of yours any more; they have gone out of your life;
they are a storm which has passed and left a deep calm behind. The
people group themselves about the decks in their snowy white linen, and
read, smoke, sew, play cards, talk, nap, and so on. In other ships the
passengers are always ciphering about when they are going to arrive; out
in these s