4

The High Seas

The kid who sits in the bucket of tar.... The buxom stewardess who comes in and inquires archly if one rang.... The humorous piano-tuner who tunes the grand piano in the music-room in the 15-16ths-tone scale.... The electric fan which, when a stray zephyr blows in through the porthole, makes a noise like a dentist’s drill.... The alien ship’s printer who, in the daily wireless paper, reports a baseball score of 165 to 3.... The free Christian Science literature in the reading-room.... The pens in the writing-room.... The elderly Grosshändler with the young wife.... The red-haired girl in the green sweater.... The retired bootlegger disguised as a stockbroker.... The stockbroker disguised as a United States Senator.... The boy who climbs into the lifeboat.... The chief steward wearing the No. 18³⁄₄ collar.... The mysterious pipes that run along the stateroom ceilings.... The discovery that one forgot to pack enough undershirts.... The night watchman who raps on the door at 3.30 A. M. to deliver a wireless message reading “Sorry missed you. Bon voyage”.... The bartender who adds a dash of witchhazel to cocktails.... The wilting flowers standing in ice-pitchers and spittoons in the hallways.... The fight in the steerage.... The old lady who gets stewed and sends for the doctor.... The news that the ship is in Long. 43°, 41′, 16″ W, Lat. 40°, 23′, 39″ N.... The report that the starboard propeller has lost a blade.

5

The Shrine of Mnemosyne

The little town of Kirkwall, in the Orkney Islands, in a mid-Winter mist, flat and charming like a Japanese print.... San Francisco and the Golden Gate from the top of Twin Peaks.... Gibraltar on a Spring day, all in pastel shades, like the back-drop for a musical comedy.... My first view of the tropics, the palm-trees suddenly bulging out of the darkness of dawn, the tremendous stillness, the sweetly acid smell, the immeasurable strangeness.... The Trentino on a glorious morning, up from Verona to the Brenner Pass.... Central Germany from Bremen to Munich, all in one day, with the apple trees in bloom.... Copenhagen on a wild night, with the Polizei combing the town for the American who upset the piano.... Christiania in January, with the snow-clad statue of Ibsen looming through the gloom like a ghost in a cellar.... The beach at Tybee Island, with the faint, blood-curdling rattle of the land-crabs.... Jacksonville after the fire in 1902, with the hick militiamen firing their machine-guns all night.... The first inauguration of Woodrow, and the pretty suffragette who drank beer with me at the Raleigh.... A child playing in the yard of a God-forsaken town in the Wyoming desert.... Bryan’s farewell speech at the St. Louis Convention in 1904.... Hampton Court on Chestnut Sunday.... A New Year’s Eve party on a Danish ship, 500 miles off the coast of Greenland.... The little pile of stones on the beach of Watling’s Island, marking the place where Columbus landed.... The moon of the Caribbees, seen from a 1000-ton British tramp.... A dull night in a Buffalo hotel, reading the American Revised Version of the New Testament.... The day I received the proofs of my first book.... A good-bye on an Hoboken pier.... The Palace Hotel in Madrid.

INDEX