During the journey round the world the aggregate of these shortenings or lengthenings will amount to twenty-four hours, so that on arriving again in England by the easterly route you will have gained a day, and instead of its being Wednesday, as you might think, it would be Tuesday, wherefore you would be obliged to have two Wednesdays in one week. By the westerly route, on the contrary, you would lose a day, so that returning on a Wednesday by your reckoning you would find everyone else calling it Thursday, and the following morning you would be obliged to recognise as Friday.
To avoid such confusion the date is always regulated when crossing the Pacific.
Going east, the captain notifies that there will be two consecutive Mondays, or two Thursdays, as the case be, in order to use up the extra day.
Going west, on the other hand, one of the days in a week must be omitted, there being no time for it if you are to arrive in port on the proper date.
A common story told in this connection is that on a certain voyage from Vancouver to Hongkong some missionary passengers settled to hold service in the saloon at 10:30 a.m. on Sunday, and posted up a notice to that effect in the usual place at the head of the saloon stairs, but omitted to previously consult the captain or ask his permission.
The captain, having no desire to be ignored, even unintentionally, aboard his own ship, quietly regulated dates, the passengers next morning finding an official notice posted up immediately over that of the missionaries, saying that it would be Sunday until 10 a.m., after which it would be Monday, so that missionaries, Sunday and divine service were all simultaneously suppressed.
The most comfortable and the most restful travelling in the world that I know of is on board the large river steamers running up the Yangtse for six hundred miles from Shanghai to Hankow, and then transhipping to somewhat smaller vessels, for the additional four hundred miles to Ichang.
Scrupulously clean, good table, jovial captains, excellent Chinese stewards, electric light, luxurious saloons, state-rooms double the size of cabins on even the finest ocean liners, few passengers, no noise and no sea-sickness, you glide on day and night over calm waters in a dream-like peace, broken only for a short time every few hours by the necessary stopping at ports of call to work cargo, and at riverside stations for Chinese passengers, who, however, do not mingle with the Europeans, but have saloons set apart for their own exclusive use. Some of these boats were built in the golden days of the early sixties, upon American models, and were fitted up on a scale considerably reduced in newer vessels.
The large bathrooms on these older boats are a great feature of comfort, and so numerous as to be almost bewildering to strangers; in fact, I have heard that a nervous young man fresh from home was the victim of an untoward mishap by mistaking the captain's bathroom for the one belonging to his own cabin, when on dashing in, the door having evidently been insecurely fastened on the inside, he found himself face to face with the captain's wife in her bath. Retreat was naturally instantaneous, but the position was so serious that his only course was to at once seek the captain and explain. This awkward task he started to perform, though in considerable trepidation, and found the husband reading in his cabin, and who, after listening calmly to a recital of the details, laconically remarked, "Ah, she has a beautiful figure, has she not?"
And the incident was closed.