Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/130

 big parlor of the ship. A man or woman was waiting all the time, with music, for a chance at the piano; it reminded me of passengers waiting around the bathrooms during the rush hour. Two young girls, sisters, sat in the room the entire evening. They pretended to be reading, but they were really watching and talking about people, and their short, quick remarks to each other probably contained a good deal of ginger When you can't do anything else to a boy, you can make him wash his face. There is a man on board with a son seven or eight years old, and certainly every hour I hear the father say to the son: "Go to your room, sir, and wash your face. And use a little extra soap on your hands." Seasickness is no disgrace. Governor Crose, of American Samoa, and who is also captain of the warship "Princeton," told me that he is often seasick; and he has been a sailor twenty-five years I heard a man making a long explanation today, and I knew he was not telling the truth; an explanation is never the truth, on sea or land A lonesome old woman on board attracts the attention of all the passengers. I talked to her awhile this afternoon, and she made one remark I'll never forget.

"My children," she said, "are already reconciled to my death."

She is traveling alone, is ill, and occupies a room with three young women who don't want her in with them, and she is very wretched. Will your children be reconciled to your death by the time you are sixty-five or seventy? Probably; maybe earlier.