s from
friends, so her cabin already looks fairly homely; and then, on the
walls, there is the most perfect round picture, framed in the bright
brass of the porthole--a sailing ship hull down on the horizon, her
sails shining like gold in the morning sun, on a sea of mother of
pearl.... There is just the faintest rise and fall, and the air is full
of the steady silky rushing sound; what is there like it, which you hear
in fine weather when the sea makes way to let you pass.

Painted at a sketch to-day of people coming on board the "Egypt" from
the tender, no great thing in colour, less in a black and white
reproduction, for eye and hand were a little taken up with luggage--a
note of lascars in blue dungarees and red turbans--East meeting
West--the Indies in mauve and lilac hats and white veils; for shades of
purple are all the fashion this year.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

[Illustration]

I have found a corner in the waist between first and second class,
where one can draw or paint without being very much overlooked; you can
get under the sky there, elsewhere you can't, and only see the horizon,
for our first class deck is under the officers' deck, and the second
class is covered with awnings, a very poor arrangement I think for you
only get light on your toes. A sailing ship's deck is ever so much
nicer, for you have a reasonable bulwark to keep wind and water off your
body instead of an open rail. You can look over a bulwark comfortably,
your eyes sheltered from the glare off the sea; on these steam-liners it
comes slanting up to your eyes under eyebrows and eyelashes--no wonder
people take to blue spectacles! In the sailing ship too you can look up
and watch the bends of white canvas and the spars-and cordage swinging
to and fro across the infinite blue, an endless delight! Here you have a
floor and blistered paint a few inches above you, on which you know the
officers promenade with the full sweep of the horizon round them and the
arc of the sky above. Still another advantage of the sailing ship is,
that you are not just one of a crowd, ticketed No. so and so, bedded,
fed, and checked off by a numeral; and you can generally count on a
barometer, and learn the names of lights and lands you pass; possibly
there may even be a thermometer, and certainly a compass. On this
"Egypt," barring a small scale Mercator's projection of the world on
which the ship's position is marke