n sit
drowsily in a steamer-chair and read and doze and dream.

From the note-book:

Here in the wastes of the Indian Ocean just under the equator the
sea is blue, the motion gentle, the sunshine brilliant, the broad
decks with their grouped companies of talking, reading, or game-
playing folk suggestive of a big summer hotel--but outside of the
ship is no life visible but the occasional flash of a flying-fish.
I would like the voyage, under these conditions, to continue
forever.

The Injian Ocean sits and smiles
So sof', so bright, so bloomin' blue,
There aren't a wave for miles an' miles
Excep' the jiggle of the screw.

--KIP.

How curiously unanecdotical the colonials and the ship-going English
are--I believe I haven't told an anecdote or heard one since I left
America, but Americans when grouped drop into anecdotes as soon as
they get a little acquainted.

Preserve your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist,
but not live.

Swore off from profanity early this morning--I was on deck in the
peaceful dawn, the calm of holy dawn. Went down, dressed, bathed,
put on white linen, shaved--a long, hot, troublesome job and no
profanity. Then started to breakfast. Remembered my tonic--first
time in 3 months without being told--poured it into measuring-glass,
held bottle in one hand, it in the other, the cork in my teeth
--reached up & got a tumbler--measuring-glass slipped out of my
fingers--caught it, poured out another dose, first setting the
tumbler on wash-stand--just got it poured, ship lurched, heard a
crash behind me--it was the tumbler, broken into millions of
fragments, but the bottom hunk whole. Picked it up to throw out of
the open port, threw out the measuring-glass instead--then I
released my voice. Mrs. Clemens behind me in the door.

"Don't reform any more. It is not an improvement."

This is a good time to read up on scientific matters and improve the
mind, for about us is the peace of the great deep. It invites to
dreams, to study, to reflection. Seventeen days ago this ship
sailed out of Calcutta, and ever since, barring a day or two in
Ceylon, there has been nothing in sight but the tranquil blue sea &
a cloudless blue sky. All down the Bay of Bengal it was so. It is
still so in