The ordinary man will think I am bragging here about my memory. He’s mistaken. Swinburne’s memory especially for poetry was far, far better than mine, and I have always regretted the fact that a good memory often prevents one thinking for oneself. I shall come back to this belief of mine when I later explain how want of books gave me whatever originality I possess. A good memory and books at command are two of the greatest dangers of youth and form by themselves a terrible handicap, but like all gifts a good memory is apt to make you friends among the unthinking, especially when you are very young.
As a matter of fact, Doctor Keogh went about bragging of my memory and power of reciting, until some of the Cabin passengers became interested in the extraordinary schoolboy. The outcome was that I was asked to recite one evening in the First Cabin and afterwards a collection was taken up for me and a first-class passage paid and about twenty dollars over and above was given to me. Besides, an old gentleman offered to adopt me and play second father to me, but I had not got rid of one father to take on another, so I kept as far away from him as I decently could.
I am again, however, running ahead of my story. The second evening of the voyage, the sea got up a little and there was a great deal of sickness. Doctor Keogh was called out of his cabin and while he was away, someone knocked at the door. I opened it and found a pretty girl.
“Where’s the Doctor?” she asked. I told her he had been called to a cabin passenger.
“Please tell him”, she said, “when he returns, that Jessie Kerr, the chief Engineer’s daughter, would like to see him.”
“I’ll go after him now if you wish, Miss Jessie”, I said. “I know where he is.”
“It isn’t important”, she rejoined, “but I feel giddy and he told me he could cure it.”
“Coming up on deck is the best cure”, I declared: “the fresh air will soon blow the sick feeling away. You’ll sleep like a top and tomorrow morning you’ll he alright. Will you come?” She consented readily and in ten minutes admitted that the slight nausea had disappeared in the sharp breeze. As we walked up and down the dimly lighted deck I had now and then to support her, for the ship was rolling a little under a sou-wester. Jessie told me something about herself; how she was going to New York to spend some months with an elder married sister and how strict her father was. In return she had my whole story and could hardly believe I was only sixteen. Why she was over sixteen, and she could never have stood up and recited piece after piece as I did in the Cabin: she thought it “wonderful.”
Before she went down, I told her she was the prettiest girl on board and she kissed me and promised to come up the next evening and have another walk. “If you’ve nothing better to do” she said at parting, “you might come forward to the little Promenade Deck of the Second Cabin and I’ll get one of the men to arrange a seat in one of the boats for us.” “Of course”, I promised gladly and spent the next afternoon with Jessie in the stern-sheets of the great launch where we were out of sight of everyone, and out of hearing as well.
There we were, tucked in with two rugs and cradled, so to speak, between sea and sky, while the keen air whistling past increased our sense of solitude. Jessie, though rather short, was a very pretty girl with large hazel eyes and fair complexion.