"Dick," I said, "these people are awful. Look at their smugness, their eagerness to be correct at any expense. They are saying good-bye to wives and mothers and sweethearts, and the whole blessed crowd of 'em haven't an obvious emotion among 'em. I'll bet my hat that they won't even wave their hands when the tender goes off."
As I left the boat the first-class passengers stood like statues, but one fat woman, with a delightfully plebeian face cried: "So long, old sport!" to a man beside me.
"Good!" cried Dick to me with a laugh.
"Lovely!" I called, and waved my hat frantically to the fat woman. Poor soul, I fear that society out East will be making her suffer for her lapse into bad form.
Travel is like a school-history reader; it forces you to study mere incident. The travelled man is an encyclopædia of information; but I don't want to know what a man has seen; I want to know what he has thought. I am certain that if I went to live in Calcutta I should cease to think. I should marvel at the colour and life of the streets; I should find great pleasure in learning the lore of the native. But in a year I should very probably be talking of "damned niggers," and cursing the India Office as a crowd of asses who know nothing about India and its problems.
I once lent Ann Veronica to a clever young lady. Her father, an engineer who had been all over the world, picked up the book. Two days later he returned it with a final note dismissing me as a dangerous character for his daughter to know. The lady was clever, and had mentality enough to read anything with impunity.
No, travel doesn't broaden a man's outlook.
My writing is like my teaching, it is an irresponsible ramble. I meant to write about songs all the time to-night.
I curse my luck in not being a pianist. I want to give my bairns that loveliest of tenor solos—the Preislied from The Meistersingers. I want to give them Lawrence Hope's Slave's Song from her Indian Love Lyrics—"Less than the Dust beneath thy Chariot Wheel." And there are one or two catchy bits in Gipsy Love and The Quaker Girl that I should like them to know. I am sure that they would enjoy Mr. Jeremiah, Esquire, and The Gipsy's Song.