Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/238

 no terrors for us. On our way to London we took the long route from Dieppe to New Haven. As we got on to the mean, creaky and overloaded little boat, I overheard the skipper say to a woman who had a six-year-old child with her: “Madam, if I were you I would take that boy down stairs and put him on his back in a cot.” It was an ominous suggestion. The channel was in bad shape. A trip, usually finished in two hours, on this day required six. Everybody was seasick. The floor of the saloon was filled with groaning women. On the deck where I was I saw a deck hand thrown flat by a toss of the sea. I paid a couple of the seamen to take Mrs. Pennypacker below and I abandoned her to her fate. Sitting on a camp stool, I steadied myself by clutching a staple driven into the wall of the saloon, and cold, sick and miserable, let the sea beat over me as it willed. Thrusting my hand into my overcoat pocket to warm it up, I found there occupying the space a pound of confectionery bought in Paris to eat on the voyage. I threw it with disgust into the sea. One poor woman who sat near me by the rail absorbed salt water apparently by the pail full and I never offered to help her. All the while the boat strained and quivered and creaked and nobody cared. It was so crowded that the men were forced to remain upon deck with the beating sea for solace, and as the hours rolled by and the darkness of the coming night came over them not a word was uttered. It was an experience worth a trip to Europe.

We stayed in London about a week and put up at the Charing Cross. We rode on top of the omnibuses and watched with interest the tangle of cabs in Threadneedle Street. We stood on London Bridge, went through St. Paul's, saw the grave of Milton and the bit of the old Roman Wall and attended a service in Westminster, where the beauties of the prayer book were mouthed in a way I could not appreciate. When I asked who broke off the fingers of Queen Elizabeth I was told it was done by Cromwell and his ragamufiins, which I did not believe. I said to a girl 224