If you go abroad you must sail. There is no railroad or cable to carry you yet. A hundred years hence people may cross the Atlantic in balloons. But you can’t wait so long. Why should you? Here is the good ship Majestic—not exactly the one shown in the picture on the first page—which will take you over from New York to Liverpool in less than six days.
Once it took weeks. Sometimes a big iceberg came sailing along right across the ship’s path. Then there was a crash. Perhaps the poor little ship went to splinters and the passengers—well, you know what happened then. Sometimes a dreadful storm came down upon the ocean and the waves went up and down, looking like mountains and valleys. Not every frail ship could stand it. There was a wreck. But in spite of all these dreadful things most passengers get there and see the sights, and have a good time and get safely home. A friend has crossed the Atlantic nearly seventy times safely.
L.
CASHMERE SHAWLS.
IT is said that sixteen thousand looms are kept in constant employment in Cashmere, producing annually about thirty thousand shawls. The shawls are woven on rudely-constructed looms, a pair of shawls sometimes occupying three or four men a whole year in weaving. The Cashmere goat, which furnishes the material, is found in Thibet, the hair of it being fine, silky and about eighteen inches long. It takes the fleece of ten goats to manufacture a shawl a yard and a half square.—Selected.
MAJOR’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
VI.
