My friends all assured me that I looked well, but I never felt so ill in all my life. If I was not ill, I ought to be. I tried to work, but broke down. I was idle in the mornings, in the evenings, and in the middle of the day as well, and it was a duty I owed to my doctor to collapse. So one day I forced myself into his consulting-room before a hundred patients waiting their turn, labelled "Well again." I pushed him into his chair, pommelled him 99 times, flashed my cane under his eyes, seized the poker and hammered him under his knee-joints, and told him I would get him six months' hard labour if he did not pronounce me sound,—he did.
"You only want a tonic now, my dear fellow—a sea-trip!"
"A Teutonic," I replied Majestically. "The very thing—sails to-morrow—a new berth—I'll be born again under a White Star—au revoir!"
"Your prescription!" he called after me. "Take it, and if you value your life act up to it to the letter."
It contained two words and no hieroglyphics. Those two words were—"No Work!"
How I acted up to it the following pages will show.
AN ATLANTIC "GREYHOUND."
In strong contrast to the crowd and bustle at leaving in the afternoon is the quietude late in the evening. Many promenade up and down the beautiful deck under the electrically-lighted roof, and gaze upon the lights of many craft flitting to and fro in the gentle breeze like will-o'-the-wisps, postponing retiring, as they are not yet accustomed to the vibration of the Atlantic greyhound, which trembles underneath them as if, like the real greyhound in full cry after a hare, it is literally straining every muscle to beat the record from the Old World to the New.