ITALY

ANOTHER PART OF KARNAK; ONLY ONE MAN ON THE JOB, BUT HE IS QUITE EQUAL TO ALL ITS REQUIREMENTS AND EMERGENCIESANOTHER PART OF KARNAK; ONLY ONE MAN ON THE JOB, BUT HE IS QUITE EQUAL TO ALL ITS REQUIREMENTS AND EMERGENCIES

I left next day by train for Alexandria, and I remember it was thirty-five years ago that I started from that city for Port Said, whence I took a steamer for India, passing through the Suez Canal, then not long opened. Time flies, but the canal is still there, at the old stand, doing a steady business with all the nations of the earth that go down to the sea in great ships as daily customers. F. J. Haskin has written an interesting and graphic description of this great work, recently published in the New YorkGlobe, in which he says:

"On the great breakwater at Port Said stands the bronze statue of Ferdinand de Lesseps, his right hand extended in a gesture of invitation to the mariners of all nations to take their ships through the great canal which was the fruit of his genius and diplomacy. Not one word is there to indicate that his fortune and good name lie buried in the failure of another canal, half way round the world.

"The romance of the Suez Canal is suggested by everything the visitor sees at Port Said, the 'turnstile of the nations.' But the tragedy of the canal, the terrible cost of life, the shameful waste of money, the enslavement of the Egyptians in governmental and financial bondage, the wreck of French hopes and aspirations—not one hint of all that tragedy is discernible. Ferdinand de Lesseps, Ismail Pasha and the Egyptian people gave civilization and commerce one of its greatest gifts in the Suez Canal, but the cost to them was all they had—and they were never repaid.

"Every day in the year a dozen great ships make the procession through the canal—the ninety miles of slow travelling which saves them the cost of circumnavigating the great continent of Africa. They pay well for it, and the owners of the canal shares wax fat. England controls the canal, the construction of which John Bull attempted in every manner to prevent. English ships bound from "home" to Bombay cut down the distance from 10,860 miles to 4,620 miles by taking the canal route, and the vast majority of ships which pay tolls to the canal company fly the British flag. Germany comes second, a long way after; Holland third, and the French, whose dreams of commercial empire cut the ditch, are fourth. The United States has not been represented in the canal in a decade by any commercial ship—only vessels of the navy and yachts of the Yankee millionaires show the Stars and Stripes to the Bedouins of the desert who bring their caravans from Mt. Sinai to the canal."

MOST IMPORTANT OF CANALS

"The tonnage of the Suez is not one-third as great as that of the Sault Ste. Marie Canal in the Great Lakes, but its importance to the commerce of the world is greater than that of any other passageway of the seas. Wherever there is a strait or a narrow passage through which commerce may go, there is sure to be a British flag flying, a British band playing, and a red-coated Tommy Atkins strutting about with a swagger stick. Suez is not an exception.

"Fourteen centuries before Christ, nearly 3,500 years ago, the Pharaoh Setee I., father of Rameses the Great, cut a canal fifty-seven miles long from a branch of the Nile delta to the bitter lakes, which are now part of the Suez Canal and which were then the northern extremity of the Gulf of Suez. That connected the Mediterranean with the Red Sea, and Egypt waxed great. But the nation decayed, and the sands of the desert filled up the ditch. Eight hundred years later the Pharaoh Necho undertook to dig the canal. More than a hundred thousand lives were sacrificed to the project, but it was abandoned when a priest predicted that its completion would cause Egypt to fall into the hands of a foreign usurper. A hundred years after Necho, the Persian Darius took up the work on the abandoned canal, but his engineers told him that its completion would cause a deluge, and he desisted. About three hundred years before Christ was born, Ptolemy Philadelphus constructed a lock-and-dam canal through which ships made the journey from one of the mouths of the Nile to the site of modern Suez. Continued wars interrupted commerce, and the locks and dams fell into decay, so that Cleopatra's navy was unable to escape to the Red Sea by canal. The Roman engineers later patched up the canal so that their galleys made their way from sea to sea; but when the Arabs came in A.D. 700 they found it choked up. Amrou, the Arab, cleared it out, but it was soon permitted to fill up again, and not until the great Napoleon reached Egypt was the canal project again considered. Napoleon abandoned the idea only because his engineers assured him that the level of the Mediterranean was thirty feet below that of the Red Sea. He then considered a lock-and-dam canal, but he evacuated Egypt before anything came of it. Of course, all those ancient canals were very narrow and shallow, and no boat now dignified with the business of carrying cargo for profit could have entered any one of them."

MEHEMET ALI WAS WARY

"Mehemet Ali, the great pasha who founded the present Egyptian khedivate, was urged to attempt the canal project, but he was wary. At last he pushed it aside, and listened to the Englishman, Robert Stephenson—the father of the railroad. Under Stephenson's supervision he built a railroad from Cairo to Suez, connecting with the line from Cairo to Alexandria. This formed the "great overland route" to India, and brought great trade and many rich tolls to the Egyptians.

"The time came when Said Pasha ruled in Cairo. To him came Ferdinand de Lesseps. Years before, while a clerk in the French consulate general in Cairo, De Lesseps dreamed the dream of the great canal. He was not an engineer, but he was a master diplomatist. He unfolded his plans to Said, who loved France and all Frenchmen, and met with encouragement. It was a magnificent scheme. The canal was not to cost Egypt one cent, but was to pay fifteen per cent. of its receipts to the Egyptian government, and at the expiration of ninety-nine years was to become the absolute property of Egypt. On such terms the concession was given to De Lesseps in 1856.

"Then De Lesseps went forth to get the money. France had just come out of the Crimean War and could not advance money for ventures. England was opposed to a canal that would let anybody have a chance at India, and the English government did everything possible to prevent the Frenchman from obtaining funds. He failed in Europe, for he could not get enough even for a survey of the canal. Nothing daunted, he went back to Egypt and borrowed money enough from Said to survey the canal and to exploit it through Europe. Then came much planning and more concessions, and much stock jobbing; but by 1860 the French company was again without money. Again the appeal was made to Said, and not without avail; for he subscribed for more than one-third or the total capital stock and promised to advance money for the construction work—and all for a project that was not to cost Egypt anything. That was the beginning of Egypt's bondage to the money lenders of Europe, for Said had to borrow the money he gave to the canal."

ISMAIL PASHA WAS EASY

"In 1863 the magnificently extravagant Ismail Pasha came to the throne of Mehemet Ali. He burned with ambition to make himself the greatest ruler in the world, and the canal was a darling of his heart. He was the ready and willing victim of the loan sharks of Europe, and he would sign anything in the way of an obligation if there was a little yellow gold in sight.

"Meanwhile the canal was progressing slowly. Ismail ordered the Egyptian peasants to do the work under the ancientcorvéesystem. Every three months 25,000 drafted fellaheen went to the big ditch to dig. Every three months a miserable remnant of the preceding 25,000 left the dead bodies of their comrades beneath the dump heaps.

"The Suez Canal was dug for the most part by those poor creatures who scooped up the sand and dirt with their bare hands and carried it up the steep banks to the dumps in palm-leaf baskets of their own making. Task masters with cruel whips of hippopotamus hide punished the sick and the fainting, as well as the lazy. There were no sanitary precautions, and the men died by the thousands.

"This horrible condition of affairs aroused the indignation of John Bull, who protested to the sultan. The sultan ordered the employment of fellaheen labor to be stopped. Then De Lesseps and the canal ring descended upon Ismail and held him responsible for damages. The case was left to the arbitration of Napoleon III., who decided for the canal ring, and Ismail was forced to pay a fine of nearly $10,000,000 because his titular sovereign lord had ordered that Ismail's subjects should not be murdered in the canal ditch. Each month a new obligation was fastened upon suffering Egypt. Finally, when the canal was completed, Ismail gave a great fête to celebrate its opening. Few festivals have been so magnificent, none so extravagant. The celebration cost $21,000,000. Verdi wrote the operaAidato order that Ismail might give a box party one evening, and an opera house was built especially for that purpose."

ENGLAND IN CONTROL

"But Ismail had signed too many notes of hand. The day of reckoning came. Ismail sold his canal shares to the English government, and by their purchase Benjamin Disraeli gave the British empire dominion over the traffic between the East and the West. It was a bold stroke, and it brought to an end the commercial aspirations of the French of the Second Empire. The canal company still has its chief offices in Paris, its clerks speak French, and its tolls are charged in francs, but otherwise it is English.

"Ismail was dethroned and died in exile, his magnificence forgotten. De Lesseps ventured on another canal project, was plunged into disgrace, and died a mental wreck. Egypt, which once levied toll on all the commerce passing between Orient and Occident, now watches the trade ships pass by. The digging of the canal was the greatest blow ever given to Egyptian commerce. But the losses of Ismail and De Lesseps and Egypt make up the gain of the civilized world.

"Opened just forty years ago, its importance has increased with every year, and its revenues are expanding each month. It cost $100,000,000, half of which was spent in bribes and excessive discounts. With modern machinery, such as is being used at Panama, it could have been built for one-quarter as much. As an engineering problem it is to the Panama Canal as a boy's toy block house to a forty-story skyscraper. How it will compare with Panama as an avenue of commerce is a question to which Americans anxiously await the answer."

The jubilee of the Suez Canal, work on which commenced in 1859, took place on April 25, 1909. When I passed through in 1874 its depth was about twenty-six feet; the present depth is about thirty-two and a half feet, and improvements are now going on which will bring it to thirty-four feet. The original width was seventy-one feet on the bottom, and this has been gradually increased until at present the bottom width is ninety-seven and a half feet. In 1870 there passed through the canal four hundred and eighty-six ships, whose gross tonnage was 654,914. Last year 3,795 ships used the canal, and their total tonnage was over 19,000,000. Truly this is one of the world's greatest conveniences!

PILLARS OF THOTHMES III., KARNAK, EGYPT, WITH TWO YOUNG MEN ON THE LOOKOUT FOR BUSINESS. THEY ARE BOTH WORTHY OF EVERY ENCOURAGEMENTPILLARS OF THOTHMES III., KARNAK, EGYPT, WITH TWO YOUNG MEN ON THE LOOKOUT FOR BUSINESS. THEY ARE BOTH WORTHY OF EVERY ENCOURAGEMENT

These reminiscences take me back again to Alexandria, as it was there that an original seaboard bank was founded. Its first president was Katchaskatchkan, a nephew of King Ram's. The old man saw to it that all the "squeeze" from the corn crop money was deposited here and that it held the margins on Joseph's grain corner. "Katch" broke his neck by falling into the wheat pit, but the incident was soon forgotten in the advancing prosperity of the bank. The place is in ruins, but we saw the "paying teller's gun," which was a decorated club with spikes on it; it lay unnoticed in a nook in the big amalgamated copper vault, covered with papyrus books and records of the bank. Some of the old past due notes on the shelves were still drawing interest and you could hear it tick like the clanking cogs when a ferry boat makes her landing. The writer fairly shudders at what the interest on those notes would now amount to, computed at five per cent. (the prevailing rate paid for call loans in that historic corner), remembering that the interest on a penny compounded at this rate since the dawn of the Christian era would now represent fourteen millions of globes of eighteen-karat gold, each globe the size of our earth! We could not help philosophizing on the change which had taken place in banking principles and methods since those old days; and the whole inspection was very interesting.

OBELISK OF THOTHMES I AND QUEEN HAPSHEPSET XVIII DYNASTY. TWO FINE OBELISKS IN THE TEMPLE OF KARNAK--A LITTLE TOPSY-TURVY LOOKING AND VERY MUCH IN NEED OF REPAIRSOBELISK OF THOTHMES I AND QUEEN HAPSHEPSET XVIII DYNASTY. TWO FINE OBELISKS IN THE TEMPLE OF KARNAK—A LITTLE TOPSY-TURVY LOOKING AND VERY MUCH IN NEED OF REPAIRS

I am reluctant to leave Egypt without saying a word about the "teep," as this land is the very home, the embodiment—the Gibraltar, so to speak, of the wide-open palm for services rendered—or even when they are not rendered. Egypt is not the only place, however, of which this can be said; there are others. But no matter where the dear American tourist lands he "gets it" both coming and going, and the "neck" is usually the place where it first attracts his attention. It is not a new thing, by any means, for the Greeks suffered more from it than we ever have. They called it "gifts," and if a man didn't give, why, he got nothing, just as he gets nothing to-day in "Del's" if he tries to escape with a glad smile instead of the regulation tariff. Usually, as we all know, the rough time is at the reckoning and the departure, if you haven't done the handsome. The waiter, if he knows his business, makes you feel your cheapness if you attempt to "do" him with an affable "Good-night," instead of the real thing. The change is so arranged for you that you may have a wide choice of coins, but if that scheme misses fire, there are still left the overcoat and the hat. The man who can pass through these ordeals with his nerve unfrayed and look through the waiter as if he were a pane of glass, would never have turned a hair if placed in front at the charge of Balaclava. I remember writing amenucard for a dinner once, and when I came to the sweetbread course it was shown that if you hadn't a coin you must still do something. Lucullus was waiting on the bank of the river Styx for his turn on Charon's ferryboat, and of course, being a shade, he had no money in his clothes; but this is what was said:

When Lucullus got on Charon's skiffHe didn't have a cent;So he handed out a sweetbreadAnd on the boat he went.

This was as straight a tip as was ever given to a waiter or at a horse-race. There was nothing between Lucullus and the "bread line" except his last sweetbread; yet as a gentleman he gave it up to the ferryman rather than lose his poise when leaving the earth.

But to return to the twentieth century, about four thousand years since the incident just related occurred: we have a variety of names for the same thing. It ispour boirein France;tipin England;macaroni"for the crew" in Italy;sugar-cane"for the donkey" on the Nile;bakshishin Africa; "bakshish" the first word the traveler hears when he gets there, "bakshish" the last when he is leaving. Why, they say the Sphinx herself tears her hair and plaintively wails when the sun has set, "Bakshish! Bakshish!! Bakshish!!!" And the only reason she does not hold out her hands for it is that she hasn't any.

THIS IS WHERE "RAM" FELL DOWN AND HAS NEVER SINCE BEEN "LIFTED." IT TAKES _PIASTRES_ TO PUT SUCH A BIG MAN ON HIS FEET. STONY MACADAM, PRESIDENT OF THE BAKSHISH TRUST & TIPPING COMPANY, WITH HIS CASHIER AND ENTIRE BOARD OF DIRECTORS IN ATTENDANCE. IT'S A TOUGH PROBLEM "STONY" CAN'T SOLVE IF THERE'S MONEY BEHIND ITTHIS IS WHERE "RAM" FELL DOWN AND HAS NEVER SINCE BEEN "LIFTED." IT TAKESPIASTRESTO PUT SUCH A BIG MAN ON HIS FEET. STONY MACADAM, PRESIDENT OF THE BAKSHISH TRUST & TIPPING COMPANY, WITH HIS CASHIER AND ENTIRE BOARD OF DIRECTORS IN ATTENDANCE. IT'S A TOUGH PROBLEM "STONY" CAN'T SOLVE IF THERE'S MONEY BEHIND IT

Sailing from Alexandria we headed for the Straits of Messina and reached them the day following, taking a passing look at Etna and Stromboli. Messina was not so badly damaged, we thought, as had been reported, and it will undoubtedly be rebuilt. Then we steamed past

NAPLES

After strolling round Naples for a couple of days we took the train for Rome.

On one of these strolls I saw what seemed to me a curious funeral. There were six horses with nodding plumes, hung with black robes, and driven in three spans by a coachman who was a wonder in himself. He wore a hat with an enormous yellow cockade; a purple coat; patent leather Hessian boots, with tassels; green tights showing the shape of his fine calves (of which he was evidently very proud), and on his whip he carried many silk ribbon bows. "Beau Brummel" might have had a coachman like him—but I doubt it. Through a pane of glass might have been seen, thoroughly ornamented and painted for public inspection, the face of the principal whom these proceedings interested no more. The hearse sported a forest of plumes also, and behind it stalked six stalwart, high-class, professional mourners, likewise in green tights and Tower-of-London hats, all members of the Pallbearers' International Union (purple card), with flowing beards and curling moustaches—probably the only men on earth whom money causes to weep and pluck their beards in pretended sorrow when in the throes of their commercial emotion. If paid enough money they do not hesitate to use the onion freely to produce the real thing in tears. Next followed a dozen of mere puling mutes, of no caste or distinction whatever but that lent by a big brass badge on the breast of each. Then came four rickety carriages of the Columbus era; they hadn't a soul in them, but their cloth upholstered seats had been whitewashed with white lead and showed by many cracks the risk any live human would take in entering the vehicles. There were no relatives of the dead present—and you could not blame them. The question arose, What is the meaning of it all? It seemed as though they had consigned the man to the grave at the least expense with no bother—a curious form of burial from our standpoint; it was strictly professional.

ROME

Rome has been so thoroughly exploited that perhaps the writing of a layman on the subject would not interest the reader, so I shall not attempt to go into details, for they would fill a very large book. Since I last visited it the city had grown to be large, clean and prosperous, under the careful and serious management of the king, whose business in life seems to be the welfare of his people and the advancement of their best interests. I met him and the queen at the Arch of Constantine; he saluted, as he does to every one he meets when walking alone in the suburbs of the city.

The three things that I remembered with the greatest interest on leaving Rome—and I still admire them most of all—were Caracalla's Baths, the Coliseum and the Forum. Perhaps no purely secular work of man has ever approached the Baths of Caracalla in sumptuous, artistic magnificence and splendor. They were more than a mile long and a little less than that in width. They consisted of three vast baths, marble lined, with rare mosaic floors: one for cold water, one for tepid and a third for hot water. There were dressing rooms, refectories, lounging gardens, schools of art, a court for athletes, another court for gladiators. Highly carved marble columns supported the roofs and the rarest statues stood in niches. The bathing capacity was the largest ever planned. To sit there alone and people it, as when it was at its best, with all the glory of the emperor, the court ladies, the vestal virgins, senators, warriors, artists, men of letters and the rest, is a treat to the imagination that cannot be realized on any other spot.

THE ARCH OF CONSTANTINE, ROME--ONE OF THE FINEST EXTANT. THE EMPEROR THOUGHT IT ALL OUT AND PLANNED IT TO ASTONISH POSTERITY, AND INCIDENTALLY TO RECORD HIS OWN GREATNESSTHE ARCH OF CONSTANTINE, ROME—ONE OF THE FINEST EXTANT. THE EMPEROR THOUGHT IT ALL OUT AND PLANNED IT TO ASTONISH POSTERITY, AND INCIDENTALLY TO RECORD HIS OWN GREATNESS

The Coliseum is the largest amphitheatre ever built: it is more than a third of a mile in circumference; it had seats for fifty thousand and standing room for thousands more. The arena was two hundred and seventy-three by one hundred and twenty feet. Beneath it were the dens for lions, tigers, bears and bulls, with rooms for the gladiators and the human victims. It was opened by Titus with a festival lasting over three months in 80 A.D., and five thousand wild animals were killed during the festivities. It was the place where the Christian martyrs met their deaths under the persecuting emperors. The imagination runs riot while trying to picture the tragic scenes that took place within its walls in the presence of multitudes. It had a "bad eminence" all its own.

The Forum was in the early days the very heart of Rome, and all that was great in it. It contained over sixty temples, public buildings, tombs, triumphal arches, columns and great statues. Here Cicero and other orators spoke to the people, and famous teachers made it their resort; its name represented the thought and refinement of the age of which it was the glory.

When I was in Rome I happened to be domiciled in a bedroom that had a connecting door with another room of the same size. This door was of course locked, the other room being occupied by an Italian. We had to make a flying start for Naples at 5 A.M., and I got up at 4, in order to shave, dress and breakfast in time to catch the train. I opened the proceedings by starting to strop my razor on a big leather strop; the door being quite flimsy, my Italian neighbor heard me distinctly, and as he was trying to fall asleep he became very angry, jumped out of bed and protested in loud and profane language. I paid no attention to his protest and then he rang his bell long and violently. As I wanted to make a respectable appearance at breakfast, I kept on stropping diligently. This added to his indignation, and when the chambermaid entered his den in response to the bell, he ordered her to go into my room and stop the noise. She rushed toward me and intimated that the gentleman was at the point of death—that he might die at any moment from heart disease, unless he were permitted to sleep. I felt that a guest had a right to shave in his own room, therefore I did not desist. My irate neighbor then jumped out of bed and in hispajamasran downstairs and brought up the manager, the cashier, the porter and a hall-boy. When I opened my door the deputation implored me to cease stropping and start shaving at once, and thus restore peace to the strained situation. I explained that I was hurrying to the train and that this would be the last of me; at which the Count rushed forward and grasping my hand, exclaimed:

"Pardon, signor! shave all you like and do it now, but don't, for heaven's sake, miss the train on any account, for if you commence that horrible slapping again I shall make my way to the nearest mad house!"

When the cause of the disturbance had ceased, he soon fell asleep, and when I began to lather my face he was artistically playing a "fluto" obligate with his nose. At this I began to knock on the door, and he at once called out:

"What now? What you want?"

"I want you to stop snoring or I'll alarm the house and have you expelled."

"Ah, you get even with me, you do! I catch the leetle joke. What will you haf to drink, signor? the wine is on me."

We left Rome and went by train to—

POMPEII

On a former visit to Pompeii I thought it a grand place, but after all, when the traveller has seen the best, it is ordinary and commonplace. It was a town of only about 30,000 people and almost all of them escaped, so no particular distinction belongs to it in any respect.

We continued on to Naples, and on the following morning took a local steamer for Sorrento. We had a look at Vesuvius, which was quiet and somewhat depressed—as it had lost six hundred feet of its cone at the last eruption.

SORRENTO

Landing at Sorrento we took a thirty-mile carriage drive along the precipitous coast, resting and lunching in a convent at Amalfi, perched high up on the hillside whither we had to climb. Then another drive to the train, which landed us back in Naples in the early hours of the morning.

MONTE CARLO

Again we embarked on theCork, and landed at Villefranche. Next day we drove through Nice and on to Monte Carlo, where we witnessed the motor boat races. After dining at theHotel de l'Hermitage, we visited the temple of chance with its twenty-five tables, devoted to a variety of games. It was all a distinct disappointment. The much vaunted decorations on the walls of the rooms were polychromatic but uninteresting—attempts at classic decoration such as an Italian sign-painter could easily equal when working for his board. The building itself was overdone in elaboration, and represented French architecture in the era when it had "broken loose." The grounds, however, were fine and the flower display the finest to be found anywhere. The players, men and women, were a debased crowd, of all nationalities. Sordid greed had eaten into their faces and there was no delight for them in anything except in grabbing the gold the turn of the wheel gave them—and it didn't give them much in return for what they staked. The games are "square." There is no cheating other than the well understood "percentage" in favor of the bank, but they are played so quickly that the player's capital is turned over thousands of times in a week, and as each turn means on the average a loss to him of the "percentage," the money does not last long. Some gamblers plunge for large sums for a short time, and are lucky enough to "break the bank at Monte Carlo;" but they return and give it all back to the prince with interest. All he asks of them is that they shall keep on playing at his game. The visitor wonders most at the dexterity with which the money of all varieties is raked, tossed and flung about the board by the croupiers, with apparently the utmost recklessness and without mistakes. They have spent their lives at it and know it the way Paderewski knows his keyboard. Three men are employed at each table to follow all the betting, and they watch like hawks every one playing. So perfectly is the whole thing done that never a word is spoken; it's all action—simply the placing of the coin on the spot. Most of the players have systems they follow, and prick their cards at each play. Hundreds of others who have no money follow their systems, just to see whether they would have won if they had had anything to risk.

THE FORUM, ROME'S GREATEST HISTORICAL CLUB, WHERE EVERY MAN HAD A HEARING IF HE HAD ANYTHING TO SAY. SOME GREAT THINGS WERE SAID THERE AND THOUGHTS COINED WHICH ARE PASSING CURRENT AS OUR OWN TO-DAYTHE FORUM, ROME'S GREATEST HISTORICAL CLUB, WHERE EVERY MAN HAD A HEARING IF HE HAD ANYTHING TO SAY. SOME GREAT THINGS WERE SAID THERE AND THOUGHTS COINED WHICH ARE PASSING CURRENT AS OUR OWN TO-DAY

We had a charming, moonlight drive back to Villefranche along the shores of the Mediterranean, where theCorklay awaiting us, and when all were aboard we steamed out through the Straits of Gibraltar to Liverpool.

LIVERPOOL

It was a general holiday at the time in that city, and I lounged about the streets, looking at the crowds of people. The "Pembroke Social Reform League" was holding a mass meeting at the foot of Wellington's monument in St. George's Square to protest against the Government's building eightDreadnaughtsat a cost of 14,000,000 pounds. The crowd was all composed of working men and was most orderly; the speakers were clever and moderate in their attitude. I became interested, and edged up to the foot of the steps in order to hear what was said. The meeting had lasted about an hour, when one speaker in finishing, remarked:

"I see an American here: will not the gentleman step up and tell us how America feels about these things?"

I was immediately threatened with heart disease and protested, but before I knew what I was about a couple of them had pulled me up on the steps and I was really "up against it," so I had to say something or beat an ignominious retreat. I have always been in full sympathy with disarmament and the reduction of naval fleets, so I told them I had just returned from Spain, Italy and Turkey, and had there seen the armies drilling and the idle navies anchored in the ports, for the most part at the expense of the poor people, many of whom had neither food nor decent clothing. At this point a young man called out:

"We are Englishmen—we want no Yankees here!"

I replied:

"Young man, you have made a bad start: I was born less than three hundred miles from where I stand, and I visited this square many times before you were born."

This statement was received with applause and I was allowed to finish what little I had to say in peace. The meeting adjourned after unanimously passing a resolution protesting against theDreadnaughts. Meetings of this character were held continuously all day.

THE BATHS OF CARACALLA, ROME, WHERE THE ROMANS HAD THE BEST TIMES OF THEIR LIVES AND WERE ALWAYS IN THE PICTURE WHILE IT LASTEDTHE BATHS OF CARACALLA, ROME, WHERE THE ROMANS HAD THE BEST TIMES OF THEIR LIVES AND WERE ALWAYS IN THE PICTURE WHILE IT LASTED

Then we took a new steamer to New York, and the cruise of theCorkwas a thing of the past.

Retrospectively I might add that we suffered from a kind of artistic and historical dyspepsia, brought about by our inability to digest the immensity of the things we had seen and their variety. After leaving Madeira the stopping places came so fast that our sightseeing was indeed hard work, each new place blotting out the one that had preceded it. Undoubtedly we would after a while remember the scenes and places visited, and we would surely do so if we read the standard writers on these subjects.

Of the management it may be said that it had a Herculean task to perform, and its work was well done. If the amount of detail it had to face and arrange had been placed in less skilful hands or neglected, it would have been fatal to our comfort and progress.

My companions were on the whole a bright, alert and sympathetic company. Here and there, of course, there was some friction; human nature, under the strain put upon it by the length of the cruise and the number of people, could not be expected by the most exacting critic to behave better. The unimportant differences of opinion and misunderstandings that arose under trying circumstances will fade with the years as they fly by, and leave only bright, pleasant, interesting memories of all the wonderful things it was our privilege to see on this remarkable trip.

I offer a humble apology for the slang I have used in these pages, but it has seemed almost impossible to describe the scenes in connection with Jerusalem and Cairo without it—in fact, I couldn't help it!

I regret exceedingly that the anonymous character of this little effort will not permit me to mention the names of many men and women who, by their good-fellowship, sincerity and helpfulness, assisted one another to pass the time and make things "go," when sometimes the going was far from good.

If in any of these lines I have given offence I hope to be pardoned, as none is intended. Every one knows that a succession of compliments and eulogies makes uninteresting reading, therefore I feel sure of being thoroughly understood; and further, I should like to add that I believe the formula, "I move we adjourn," will be appreciated by the patient and, I hope, forgiving reader. At this stage of the proceedings the aeroplane must be lowered to kiss the dew and so glide into its hangar, regrets being current that we had not the pleasure of Messrs. Cook and Peary's company as passengers.

THE AUTHOR.

THE END

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