There have been two realists who have written poetry of the sea. One is Shakespeare, who wrote: "Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground." The other is James Montgomery Flagg, who in his "All in the Same Boat" exposes the sea down to its very depths. The sea treated him abominably. He retaliated by throwing a book. If the sea had any sense of shame it would dry up, and so would certain of the passengers upon it. The Cheerful One, for instance:

"He sees you are dozing, he knows you are ill;
But he will sidle up, just to say,
As he crowds his gay person on half of your chair,
'Well, how's the boy feeling to-day?'"

Don't ever fancy that the Cheerful One among the passengers inquires thus because he cares a whit. He only wishes to emphasise his own immunity from mal de mer, and blow the smoke of his disgusting pipe into your face. Neither his stomach nor his intellect is sensitive. He has a monologue on sea-sickness: it is all nonsense, imagination. It denotes weakness, not so much of the stomach as of the mentality, the will, the character. And besides, you don't call this rough, do you? You ought to have crossed with him in the old Nausia in 'eighty-nine. Fourteen days and the racks never off the table! Only two other passengers at meals, and—don't you feel it coming?—the captain said it was the—but you fill in the rest. Ah, if the Nausia had only sunk with all on board!

QUITE THE NICEST PLACE ON THE WHOLE SHIP IS THE SMOKE-ROOM.

When the voyage is smooth and the Cheerful One is denied the joy of making sea-sick folk feel sicker, he is disappointed but not idle, for he may still extort confessions from untravelled persons. You know him: the solid, red-faced man who dresses for dinner and sits at the head of the table eating fried things loud and long when it is rough. He wears travel as though it were the Order of the Garter, and tells you, between mouthfuls, about all the ships that sail the seas. "No, sir! Pardon me! The table on this ship cannot compare with that of the old Gorgic. The Potterdam's the only ship for table outside the Ritz-Carlton boats, though Captain Van der Plank's a personal friend of mine. He knows what eating is, sir! Still, I like the small boats—no elevators, gymnasiums, and swimming-pools for me. I like to know I'm at sea, sir." And all the time he's casting round for a victim who has never been across before.

You see, there is something very ignominious in making a first transatlantic trip. No one should ever do it. Everybody should begin with the second or third trip. Yet I remember a little Kansas City lawyer I met on the New Amsterdam, who didn't seem to be ashamed of owning up. He was bald-headed and, despite the twinkling eyes behind his spectacles, solemn-looking. His bald head felt a draught from an open port-hole during dinner on the first night out, and it was when he asked the "waiter" to "close the window" that the "seasoned traveller" (as they love to call themselves) snapped up his cue. Turning in his seat and bringing his wide white shirt-front to bear full upon his victim, he raised a foghorn voice and asked the dreaded question:

"Ever been abroad before?"

We all squirmed with sympathy for the little man.

"No," he replied, looking up with a mild, innocent expression.

The shirt-front bulged; the watery blue eyes looked up and down the table for attention, then:

"That so?" with a patronising air of feigned surprise. "I've been over thirty-four times!"

"Ever been in Omaha?" returned the lawyer blandly.

"Why—no."

"That so?" replied the lawyer, with fine mimetic quality. "I go there every week!"

Oh, Innocents, as you set out on your first trip abroad, don't let yourself be bullied by the boastful! Call the steward a waiter, call the port-hole a window, call the promenade deck the front porch, but call oh, call the transatlantic bully down! Be ready for him the instant he bawls that he's a member of the Travellers' Club. For the rest, be the ingenuous traveller, if you like. Be the man who has a mania for sitting at the captain's table, the man who goes abroad to get a lot of labels on his suit-case, the man who buys a set on Broadway (for two dollars) and sticks them on at home, the man who howls when bands play "Dixie," the man who wears the Stars and Stripes upon his hat, the man who gambles with the racy-looking stranger underneath the warning smoke-room sign (and stops payment on the cheque by cable), be personally conducted, be anything you like; but if you ever get to patronising people who are sea-sick, if you ever get to being proud of having crossed the ocean oftener than little Kansas City lawyers, do this:

Wait until the ship is settled for the night, go out on the dark deck, step over to the rail, and place the left hand lightly but firmly upon it. Then give an upward and outward jump, raising the feet and legs to the right, in such manner as to permit them to pass freely over the obstruction. When they are well over, remove the left hand from the rail. This is called vaulting. The water may be cold, but you won't mind it very long. And one word more: Don't gurgle; somebody might hear you and stupidly spoil all by crying out, "Man overboard!"

If you decide to "end it all"—which, I believe, is the expression adopted by the best authorities—there is one humane suggestion I would make. End it before the ship's concert. There's absolutely no use in just living on and saying you won't go to the concert, for that is just what everybody else says, yet everybody always goes. There is a horrible fascination about a ship's concert, something hypnotic that draws you, very much against your word and will. I always think of it as a sort of awful antidote that is given to the passengers to counteract the poison of the steady boredom of the ship. It is an event in the voyage, just as the appendicitis operation is an event in life. And as the only people who enjoy the appendicitis operation are the doctors, the only people who go gaily to the concert are those who go there to perform.

The chairman, for instance, enjoys it very much. He is a peer, a member of Parliament, or the United States consul at Shepherd's Bush, and he begins his speech by stating that the proceeds of the entertainment will be equally divided between the Seamen's Funds of New York and Liverpool, or somewhere else. It is then necessary to explain what seamen are. They are "these brave, watchful fellows who have our lives in their hands." At this, the chairman looks at the table stewards, who stand about the walls with their napkins and their middle-class grins; brave, watchful fellows trying to look as if they really held our lives and not our dinners in their hands.

His duty to the Seamen's Funds accomplished, the chairman passes on to other things. Just what they are depends upon his nationality. If he be a British chairman, his speech will be composed of throaty sounds, coughs, clearings of the throat, and mumblings, through which the quick ear of the auditor may catch the following remarks:

"As a matter of