Europe Revised | Page 4

in them; facts to be found on every page and in every paragraph. Reading such a work, you imagine that the besotted author said to himself, "I will just naturally fill this thing chock-full of facts"--and then went and did so to the extent of a prolonged debauch.
Now personally I would be the last one in the world to decry facts as such. In the abstract I have the highest opinion of them. But facts, as someone has said, are stubborn things; and stubborn things, like stubborn people, are frequently tiresome. So it occurred to me that possibly there might be room for a guidebook on foreign travel which would not have a single indubitable fact concealed anywhere about its person. I have even dared to hope there might be an actual demand on the part of the general public for such a guidebook. I shall endeavor to meet that desire--if it exists.
While we are on the subject I wish to say there is probably not a statement made by me here or hereafter which cannot readily be controverted. Communications from parties desiring to controvert this or that assertion will be considered in the order received. The line forms on the left and parties will kindly avoid crowding. Triflers and professional controverters save stamps.
With these few introductory remarks we now proceed to the first subject, which is The Sea: Its Habits and Peculiarities, and the Quaint Creatures Found upon Its Bosom.
From the very start of this expedition to Europe I labored under a misapprehension. Everybody told me that as soon as I had got my sea legs I would begin to love the sea with a vast and passionate love. As a matter of fact I experienced no trouble whatever in getting my sea legs. They were my regular legs, the same ones I use on land. It was my sea stomach that caused all the bother. First I was afraid I should not get it, and that worried me no little. Then I got it and was regretful. However, that detail will come up later in a more suitable place. I am concerned now with the departure.
Somewhere forward a bugle blares; somewhere rearward a bell jangles. On the deck overhead is a scurry of feet. In the mysterious bowels of the ship a mighty mechanism opens its metal mouth and speaks out briskly. Later it will talk on steadily, with a measured and a regular voice; but now it is heard frequently, yet intermittently, like the click of a blind man's cane. Beneath your feet the ship, which has seemed until this moment as solid as a rock, stirs the least little bit, as though it had waked up. And now a shiver runs all through it and you are reminded of that passage from Pygmalion and Galatea where Pygmalion says with such feeling:
She starts; she moves; she seems to feel the thrill of life along her keel.
You are under way. You are finally committed to the great adventure. The necessary good-bys have already been said. Those who in the goodness of their hearts came to see you off have departed for shore, leaving sundry suitable and unsuitable gifts behind. You have examined your stateroom, with its hot and cold decorations, its running stewardess, its all-night throb service, and its windows overlooking the Hudson--a stateroom that seemed so large and commodious until you put one small submissive steamer trunk and two scared valises in it. You are tired, and yon white bed, with the high mudguards on it, looks mighty good to you; but you feel that you must go on deck to wave a fond farewell to the land you love and the friends you are leaving behind.
You fight your way to the open through companionways full of frenzied persons who are apparently trying to travel in every direction at once. On the deck the illusion persists that it is the dock that is moving and the ship that is standing still. All about you your fellow passengers crowd the rails, waving and shouting messages to the people on the dock; the people on the dock wave back and shout answers. About every other person is begging somebody to tell auntie to be sure to write. You gather that auntie will be expected to write weekly, if not oftener.
As the slice of dark water between boat and dock widens, those who are left behind begin running toward the pierhead in such numbers that each wide, bright-lit door-opening in turn suggests a flittering section of a moving-picture film. The only perfectly calm person in sight is a gorgeous, gold-laced creature standing on the outermost gunwale of the dock, wearing the kind of uniform that a rear admiral of the Swiss navy would wear--if the Swiss had any navy--and holding