with names upon the sailing list, and failing very badly. The woman whom we picked for Mrs. H. Van Rensselaer Somebody (travelling with two maids, two valets, one Pomeranian, one husband, and no children) proves to be a Broadway showgirl; and the one we dubbed a duchess, the proprietor of a Fifth Avenue frock-foundry. Showgirls, milliners, and dressmakers are very often the "smart" people of the ship, and it must be regretfully admitted that duchesses too often fail to mark themselves by that arrogance and overdress which free-born American citizens have a right to expect of them.

It always seems to me they ought to put the peers and persons of interest at the head of the passenger-list; but they do not. The first place on the list of every liner is reserved for Mr. Aaron, precisely as the last place is invariably held for Mr. Zwissler. But though the alphabetical roller irons out our names in rows, it does not iron out our tastes and personalities. We may still be quite as common or exclusive as we wish. Take, for instance, the H. Van Rensselaer Somebodys (of New York, Newport, and Paris). Low down on the list, they are, nevertheless, up high on the ship. They will remain throughout the voyage upon the topmost deck (cabins de luxe A, B, C, and D) in a state of exclusive and elegant sea-sickness. You will not see them. They have "absolutely nothing in common" with any of the other passengers—excepting mal de mer and perchance a wife or husband ex-officio.

HOW THE SHIP ROLLS AND LURCHES!

Of course we have an opera-singer on board—a lady with a figure like the profile of a disc record. No home on the rolling deep can be complete without one. You feel as if you really knew her personally, having heard her voice so often upon your coffee-mill at home. And of course we have an actor or an actress with us. A liner might as well attempt to go to sea without a rudder as without one.

Also, if we are to have full measure, there must be on board a playwright or a novelist, a scientific man, an absconder, a bishop, a transatlantic sharper; a group of nasal people "personally conducted" by a man with a sad, patient face; a lord, or at the very least, a baron and some counts. The other passengers are, for the most part, colourless and quiet people like ourselves.

The men upon a liner are divided into two broad classes: the deck crowd and the smoke-room crowd. I can not tell you much about the former, as I see them only now and then at meals; but the smoke-room is always full of pleasant chaps. You see, the smoke-room on an English liner is made (like English law) for men only, and, being made for men, it is the most comfortable place upon the ship. It is my habit to make for the smoke-room as soon as I decently can (or even sooner), there to lie upon a leather couch, feet up, back propped against a cushion, and smoke, or doze, or read, or talk, or think about the endlessness of transatlantic trips. Only two things can drive me from the smoke-room: one is the smoke-room steward, who closes up at night; the other is my own sense of shipboard duty toward family or friends. Occasionally one has to go and see how they are faring.

How the ship rolls and lurches the moment that one rises from the leather couch! How cold and damp and windy is the deck, how desolate the ladies' cabin when one comes from the snugness of the smoke-room! Upon a narrow seat just inside the cabin door, an indelicate old person lies, eyes closed and jaws agape. Across the room, a book turned downward in her lap, sits the forlorn object of your fond solicitude. Her eyes are gazing straight ahead, at nothing.

"Ah, dear," you say, approaching with the best show of gaiety that you can muster, "here you are, eh? I thought I'd come and see if you wanted me."

"Oh, no."

"Did that canned pineapple disagree with you? I'm glad I didn't touch it. Well, then, I'll run in and see them auction off the pool. You won't mind? By-by, dear."

You think that you want air. Reeling to the wind swept deck, you cling unsteadily to an iron post at the fore part of the ship. Your cap goes flying overboard, carried, like an aeroplane, upon the gale; your cigar is blown to shreds; you feel the sting of cold salt spray upon your face; your eyeballs rock with the great bow of the ship, which rears itself in air, higher, higher, higher, then smashes down upon the sea, throwing green, hissing mountains off to either side, only to rear and smash again a million times.

Yet some people say this is agreeable! this senseless movement of a ship, this utter waste of time and energy! But you know better. You let go of the post, bolt down the deck, dive into the smoke-room, and fling yourself again upon the leather couch. As you touch it, a magic calm o'erspreads the sea. Then all is well until your sense of duty pricks again.

AH, CONFIDENCES BESIDE A LIFE-BOAT ON THE UPPER DECK!

That the smoke-room is iniquitous, I own—as iniquitous as a comfortable club, with nice dark wainscoting, leather chairs and couches, and little bells to touch when good cigars and other things are wanted. It is, therefore, quite the nicest place on the whole ship.

My deck-walking friends will not subscribe to this, of course. They call my smoke-room views and habits anything but healthy, and urge me to come out upon the cold and slippery decks, and get the chilly "benefits" of being on the sea. Alas! there is but one benefit for me, and that is Europe. I detest the sea. I abhor it with an awful loathing. It offends alike my physical system and my sense of proportion. It is too sickeningly out of scale, too hideously large!

Do not fancy that I object to water, as such. In glasses, in bath-tubs, under bridges, or trimmed with swans and water-lilies, water is all well enough. But to put so much of it in one place is a wasteful, vulgar show!

You see that I am telling you the truth about the sea. I am not one to sit upon the shore and write you poetry (of the kind that is described as rollicking) about it. What occupation could be more despicable than that of making sea-songs to mislead the public?

The sea! The sea! The open sea!
The blue, the fresh, the ever free!
I never was on the dull, tame shore,
But I loved the great sea more and more.

Do you grasp the ambiguity, the subtle trickery of that last line? What does it really mean? It means that Bryan W. Procter, who wrote it, had to be upon the shore to love the sea; that the more he was upon the shore the more he loved the sea and that the more he was upon the sea the more he loved the shore. In other words, he loathed the sea, as I do. And I am told he hardly left his native England for dread of the Channel trip.

As for Coleridge, Cunningham, and Campbell, it is only too evident that they wrote sea-songs in vain celebration of their own initials. Byron and Wallace Irwin were probably bribed by the transatlantic steamship companies and the Navy Department.

And not one of them is a realist.