"Then, there's another sort of Philistine, who goes all over the Old World eating his lunch off places where men have suffered, died, or invented pendulums.
"'That confounded Leaning Tower does feel like it's wiggling as you go up, but pshaw! it's perfectly safe! Why, I stayed on top long enough to eat three sandwiches and drink a bottle of that red ink you get for half a dollar in Florence!'
"This doesn't create much of a stir, however, because there's always one better.
"'Nice little tower down there in Pisa—and you really have to have something like that to relieve your constitution of the pictorial strain in Florence—but you see, after you've eaten hard-boiled eggs on top of Cheops, climbing the Leaning Tower is not half so exciting as riding a sapling was when you were a boy!'
"'And oh, speaking of hard-boiled eggs—have you ever been to Banff, Mr. Smith?' one of the women in the crowd speaks up. 'Yes, the scenery in the Canadian Rockies is all right, of course, but just to think of having your eggs perfectly hot and well done in the waters of Banff!'
"There are other women on board, however, whose thoughts are not on food. They are more amusing by far to watch than the innocent creatures who love Banff. They manage to stay well out of view by strong daylight, then come into the lounge at night, dressed in plumes and diamonds like Cinderella's stepsisters, and select the husbands of sea-sick wives to ask advice about focusing a kodak or going to Gibraltar to buy a mandarin coat!
"But, as I have said, the men for the greater part are much more interesting than the women—still I have never aspired to a nautical flirtation, for a month after one is past you can't recall the principal's name. You do well if you can remember his nationality."
The entry broke off with this piece of sarcasm, which, after all, is actual truth. A friend of mine had such an experience. A month after a bitter parting on a moonlit deck one night she came face to face with the absent one in a church in Rome—and all she could stammer was: "Oh—you Canadian!"
The fourth day—after the last vestige of the gulls had been left behind—I began to grow impatient. The "meanwhile" aspect of life in general was beginning to press down.