"No sah, ah doan't neber ride on dem things," said an old coloured lady looking in on the merry-go-round.
"Why, de other day I seen dat Rastus Johnson git on an' ride as much as a dollah's worth an' git off at the very same place he got on at, an' I sez to him: 'Rastus,' I sez, 'yo' spent yo' money, but whar yo' been?'"
—Ladies Home Journal.
Emma B. Pray
Not very long ago, in one of the newspapers, I read of a lady who had traveled some thirty thousand odd miles in her life time, and the item set me to thinking of the many times I had traveled with my husband some years ago when he commanded a clipper ship on Eastern voyages. For Curiosity's sake I looked over my journals and found that in the few voyages I had made I had covered two hundred forty-nine thousand two hundred sixteen miles—but how it all came about is a long story.
When I was a young girl, if any one had told me that I should spend a certain number of years travelling about in Eastern countries, passing three or four months at a time on the ocean, I should have said, "What an idea! Here I am, born and brought up in a small New Hampshire town, in a family whose idea seems to be to keep as far away from the water as possible, and with no thought of ever crossing it, 'Unless,' as my father used to say, 'there should be a bridge built by which we could do so'."
In fact my knowledge of a ship and its belongings was nearly equal to that of the young lady who was about to make her first trip across the ocean with her father. Seeing the sailors about to weigh anchor she inquired why they were working so hard. Her father replied, "They are weighing the anchor, my dear." "How absurd! If the Captain wants to know the weight of the anchor why doesn't he have it weighed beforehand and not wait until we get ready to start and then keep us waiting for the men to weigh it?"
However, it is the unexpected that always happens, and one day I married a young sea captain from a seaport town. He was soon to sail for Australia, and to me such a trip was literally going to the ends of the earth. I feel sure that my parents never expected me to return. What preparations we made for that voyage! What pickles, preserves, cakes, and everything that would keep, were packed for me and sent aboard our ship which was lying in New York harbor!