Europe Revised

couple were from somewhere in the central part of Ohio and they were taking their honeymoon tour; but, if I were a bridal couple from the central part of Ohio and had never been to sea before, as

gage was brand-new, and the groom's shoes were shiny with that pristine shininess which,

age-there they were, exchanging a kiss-one of the long-drawn, deep-siphoned, sirupy kind. You stepped into the writing room thinking to find it deserted, and at sight of you they br

n the tempestuous bosom of the overwrought ocean, they were gone from human ken. On the afternoon of the third day, the sea being calmer now, but

steamer chairs. Then the stewards hurried away; but presently they reappeared, dragging the limp and dangling forms of the

ce well-coifed hair hung in lank disarray about a face that was the color of prime old sage cheese-yellow, with a fleck of green here and there-

me both of them lay there without visible signs of life-just two muffled, misery-stricken heaps. Then, slowly and languidly,

ir within his bosom. At any rate, gently and softly, his hand fell on the rug about where her shoulder ought to be. She still had life enough left in her t

s, and how grieved and heartstricken! Love's young dream was o'er! He had thought she loved him, but now he knew better. Their marriage had been a terr

t on one side and Ireland just over the way. People who had not been seen during the voyage came up to breathe, wearing the air of per

h and health, and they were in a tight clinch; it was indeed a pretty sight. Love had returned on rose

of indisposition going over; and if it had been seasickness I should not hesitate a moment about coming right out and saying so. In these matters I believe in being absolutely fran

s-who never feel well unless they are ill. In the old days they would have had resort to patent medicines and the family lot at Laurel Grove Cemetery; but now they go in for rest cures and sea voyages, and the baths at Carlsbad and specialists, these same being main contributing causes to the present high c

that was absolutely incurable, and she was now going to Homburg to have one of the newest and most fatal German diseases in its native haunts, where it would be

company, do you think she would confess she had been seasick? Not by any means! She said she had had a raging headache. But she could not fool me. She had the stateroom next

served at lunch-their look or their smell or something-which seemed to make them distasteful to me; and I excused myself from the company at the table and went up and out into the open air. But the deck was unpleasantly congested with

he sky was hidden, then dipping down and down and down until the gray and heaving sea seemed ready to leap over the side and engulf us. So I deci

suddenly grown large and wide and full of great distances; and besides, I thought it was just as well to have the left shoe where I could put my hand on it when I needed it again. So I retired practically just

ner in which my pajamas, limp and pendent from that hook, swayed and swung back and forth became extremely distasteful to m

least, did not smile at me in that patronizing, significant way-and ordered a dinner that included nearly everything on the dinner card except Lubly's thumb. The dinner was brought to me in relays and I ate it-ate it all

body had put a Bible on my chest and held it there I would cheerfully have laid my right hand on it and taken a solemn oath that I was seasick. Indeed, I believed I

tly. I shall, however, pass hastily over these distressing details, merely stating in parentheses, so to speak, that I did not rememb

person-but it was a wrong diagnosis. The steward told me so himself when he called the next morning. He came and found me stretched prone on the bed of affliction; and h

t was a very common complaint in that latitude; many persons suffered from it. The symptoms were akin to seasickness, it was true; yet the two maladies were in no way to be confused. As soon as we passe

or years, is not an authority on climate fever, who is? I looked at it in that light. And sure enough, when we had passed out of the Gulf Stream and the sea had smoothed itself out, I made a spee

e heart and the lungs and the bowels of that ship. Electricity spat cracklingly in our faces, and at our sides steel shafts as big as the pillars of a temple spun in coatings of spumy grease; and through the double skin of her we could hear, over our heads, a mighty Niagaralike churning as the

alize that I was far from being a well person. As one peering through a glass darkly, I saw one of the attendant demons sluice his blistered bare breast with cold water, so that the sweat and grime ran from him in streams like ink; and peering in at a furnace door I saw a gr

set the human stomach-third class is better fed and better quartered now on those big ships than first class was in those good old early days-but I had held in as long as I could and now I rela

all the knowing passengers as a professional gambler; for he was the very spit-and-image of a professional gambler as we have learned to know him in story books. Did he not dress in plain black, without any jewelry? He certainly did. Did he not have those long, s

e at police headquarters, over here. Women simply could not resist him. Let him make up his mind to win a woman and she was a gone gosling. His picture was to be found in rogues' galleries and ladies' l

eum bureau, going abroad to sign up some foreign talent for next season's Chautauquas; and the only gambling he had ever d

it should so fall out that Mr. Y and his friend Mr. X chanced to be the only available candidates for a foursome at this fascinating pursuit; and if Mr. Z, being still hostile toward the sobered and repentant Mr. Y, should decline to take on either Mr. Y or his friend X as a partner, but chose you instead; and if on the second or third deal you picked up your cards and found you had an apparently unbeatable hand and should bid accordingly; and Mr. X should double you; and Mr. Z, sitting across from you should come gallantly right back and redouble it; and Mr. Y, catching the spirit of the moment, should double again-and so on and so forth until each point, instead of being worth only a paltry cent or two, had accumulated a value of a good many cents-if all these things or most of them should befall in the order enumerated-why, then, if I were you, gentle reader, I would have a care. And I should leave that game and go somewhere else to have it too-lest a worse thing befall you as it befell the guileless young Jerseyman on our ship. After he had paid

g read in the public prints that the prodigal and card-foolish son of a cheese-paring millionaire father meant to take the ship too; but he had grievously disappointed them by not coming aboard at all. Then, when in an effort to make their traveling e

sed the ocean on one of the biggest hotels afloat. I had amassed quite a lot of nautical terms that would come in very handy for stunning the folks at home when I got back. I had had my first thrill at the sight of foreign shores. And just by casual contact with members of the British arist

ur favorite flower was, and our birthstone and our grandmother's maiden name, and what we thought of a race of people who regarded a cup of ostensible coffee and a dab of honey as constituting a man's-size breakfast. And, being pret

d learned, among other things, that the Atlantic Ocean, considered as such, is a considerably overrated body. Having been across it, even

e. Poets without end have written of the sea, but I take it they stayed at home to do their writing. They were not on the bou

; but I will not-at least not just yet. Perhaps later on I may feel moved to do so; but at this moment I a

e is not that you took it, but that you have it to talk about afterward. And, to my mind, the most inspirin

y seconds to