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 to stern, our boat is all a-quiver with glad excitement. We have not been drowned! There beside us dances the little tender to take us ashore at Falmouth.

The good safe earth is firm beneath our feet before the lace importer speaks. Then, looking out on the harbor, he says: "On my last business trip over a few months since, my steamship came in here safely. But the boat ahead and the next behind each struck a mine." So the chances of life are like that, sometimes as close as one in three. But while you take them as they come, there are lesser difficulties that it's a great relief to have some one to do something about. At this very moment I am devoutly glad for the lace importer near at hand. He is carrying my bag and holding his umbrella over me in the rain. For, you see, he is an American man. The more I have travelled, the more certain I have become that it's a mistake to be a woman anywhere in the world there aren't American men around. In far foreign lands I have found myself instinctively looking round the landscape for their first aid. The others, I am sure, mean well. But they aren't like ours. An Englishman gave me his card last night at dinner: "Now if I can do anything for you in London," he said, and so forth. It was the American man now holding his umbrella over me in the rain, who came yesterday to my steamer chair: "It's going to be dark to-morrow