href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@45810@[email protected]#i10" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">Le Cèdre at Saint-Germain

Dear Father:—

The writing-room is a bower of gold leaf, electric-light fixtures, and Louis XIV brocade, but it is injudiciously placed where both the motion and vibration are greatest, and not even the marvelously developed yellow cherub, who holds a candelabrum over my shoulder, is inviting enough to induce me to stay here long. Not that I haven’t plenty to tell. I could easily use up all the ship’s paper in describing the various people and events of this memorable week.

The day we sailed was perfectly gorgeous. You remember. Mrs. Bigelow and I watched the big buildings and the Statue of Liberty slowly melt into the sunset, and then we went down to see what surprises the stateroom might reveal. And they were plenty. Letters upon letters and lovely presents. The atmosphere was a trifle charged as we passed the three-mile limit, and we all found billets—not so doux as they might have been—on our pillows assigning us to lifeboats and saying just what to do when the signal should be given to abandon the boat. Both Mrs. Bigelow and Miss Short were assigned to Lifeboat No. 10, while I was shunted off in Lifeboat No. 8—a bad omen, I thought. We went up on the top deck and looked them over. No. 8 looks like a peanut shell—and then we looked over the edge where the great big blue rollers were beginning to make the boat creak, and decided rather hurriedly to go down to dinner. You can imagine yourself what it would be like to start off on the sea in a canoe at our island when there was a good dash at the rocks.

Now here is where the Shrinking Violet steps in. Miss Short lost her traveling-bag, and was in misery. She can’t speak or understand one word of French—and she appealed to me. I suppose you would have had me back coyly into the stern of the boat, and say that I didn’t know the word for suitcase and didn’t dare speak to the steward. But not so. I went up to a tremendous great gold-braided Frenchman and linked together the words “bagage,” “noir,” and