Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/488

 explanation I know of. Anyone going abroad, by taking this line, sees Palermo, in Sicily, and Naples, in Italy, on the way, landing finally at Marseilles, in France. Some of the other ships of the line stop at Lisbon, in Portugal, and at the Azores, also You can pay almost any price for accommodations at sea. It is said John Jacob Astor paid $5,000 for accommodations on the "Titanic," and the management didn't do a thing but drown him. He had three or four rooms, two baths, a private dining-room, etc. Speaking of J. J. Astor reminds me that he made financial mistakes, as well as the rest of us. In closing up his estate it was found that he had ten million dollars worth of securities which were practically worthless. But Astor could drive a hard bargain, on occasion. He once found a man who was hard up, and who wanted to sell a yacht which cost half a million dollars. The yacht was new, and the man thought he ought to have $450,000 for it. But Astor finally got it for $90,000.,,. There is a man on board who is the best newspaper scholar I have ever known. He is familiar with everything that has appeared in the newspapers for the past twenty or thirty years. I have posted myself on the news of the past five months by talking to him. He is very entertaining, and quite modest; he frequently says: "I know nothing about it myself; I only know what I read in the newspapers." I have never before known a man quite like him We have dinner at 6:30 on the "Canada," but the passengers never come into the dining-room until a quarter of an hour later, when the table d'hote dinner begins. At the fine Hotel Vesuve, in Naples, the dinner hour was