Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/167

 it. Our baggage having been sent in the morning, we found it waiting for us in our rooms. There are 120 first-class passengers; no second-class, and no steerage. The ship is two years old, 508 feet long, with an unusual beam (which means width, and width means steadiness at sea), and altogether we are well pleased An old gentleman and his wife attracted our particular attention because so many had come to see them off. There were many children and grandchildren, and after the whistle had warned all visitors to go ashore, we stood beside the old gentleman and his wife at the rail, looking at the crowd. A woman in the crowd below was evidently a married daughter of the old couple we admired, and she had a nurse girl with her, and the nurse girl was carrying a baby.

"Mother," the married daughter called out, softly, "did you say good-by to Daisy?"

Daisy was the nurse girl, and the fine old mother said she had said good-by to Daisy, but, to make it good measure, she said good-by to her again My room is considerably larger than the one I shared with three others on the "Maunganui." I have two chairs, a clothes closet, and a chest of drawers, all of which were lacking on the "Maunganui." On that ship I hadn't a single hook on which to hang my clothing; in my room on the "Anchises" there are fifteen hooks. If I live fifty years longer, at the end of the forty-ninth year I shall still be telling with indignation of my room on the "Maunganui." Four men in a room nine by ten feet is as bad as asking four men to use one bathtub at the same time At exactly 6 we got away as advertised.