we were waiting for the mails to be put aboard bought a carved oak walking-stick and a shillelagh."

This seemed pretty well for a chance flying visit; but there was a discontented tone in the young man's voice and a look in his face that indicated a suspicion there was something he had omitted. I gathered from wide conversation among these frank and hearty people that for them the chief attractions in England are the Tower of London, the city of Chester, Westminster Abbey, Shakespeare's Tomb, and the Royal Stables.

Amongst the sights of Queenstown not entered in any recognized guide book, what moved the Americans most was the process of getting the Royal mails on board the tender. The arrangements for the transmission of the mails are in the same primitive condition they were when the mails first went by the Queenstown route. Possibly things go all right up to Cork, but thereafter follow arrangements that would be incredible except from the lips of an eye-witness. The distance from Cork to Queenstown by the direct line is fifteen miles, which in the case of the Royal mail would be covered in as many minutes by the English Midland or Great Western Railway. The Irish train carrying the mails, with

a colossal steamer and a thousand passengers impatiently awaiting them, stops at nearly every station on the way down, and arrives breathless and puffing in thirty-five minutes.

Then the screaming part of the farce begins. Instead of swift well-horsed mailcarts, that would cover the intervening space between the railway station and the wharf in a few minutes, a melancholy procession of heavy one-horse carts are backed in, and when loaded leisurely meander down to the wharf. As the yard and entrance admit of only one cart at a time, an empty one has to be cleared out before a full one is brought up. A gang of about a dozen men are ready to shoulder the sacks and trot off with them to the tender, a force sufficiently strong. But there is only one man on the cart to place the sacks on the men's shoulders, and the stream is constantly dammed, three or four men regularly waiting till they can be loaded. It seems so obvious a thing to take off one of the gang of porters and put him on the cart to help to load, that it is presumable the step is not taken only because such increase of expedition would be out of keeping with the general arrangements.

When, as happened on the day we sailed, the Australian and New Zealand mails swell the consignment up to nearly four hundred

sacks, a delay ensues equal to a considerable money value. An American of a statistical turn of mind calculated that if the loss in the value of time to the owners of the Britannic, to the consignees of freight, and to the thousand passengers were added together, it would amount to a sum sufficient to pay the cost of telegraphing all the letters in the mail bags. That is a calculation evidently made upon imperfect data, by a man deeply moved at this evidence of the ineptitude of a played-out nation. But the amount of mere money loss. would be sufficient in a year to cover any reasonable expenditure upon obvious ways of improvement.

In packing up for a long journey the question of books presents itself with persistency. But books take up much room, and weigh heavy. Moreover, it is well known that in the United States you can buy, at prices varying from sevenpence-halfpenny to tenpence, the choicest works of modern English literature. It is not without some feeling of shamefacedness that one purchases at this rate the works of dear friends, knowing that they are being robbed of their dues. But what would you? When you go to Rome you must do as the Romans do, and similarly in the United States, soothed by the certainty

that a great and enlightened people would not systematically pursue a particular practice if it were actually dishonest. With this prospect at an early stage of the journey of an unlimited supply of books in cheap and portable form, it seems sufficient if one could take from home a compendious little volume with something in it for all possible emergencies.

This is to be found in "English as She is Spoke," that precious volume with which Senor Pedro Carolino has dowered the world. Turning up the page where instructions are given "For embarking one's self," I find the hints brief, but to the point.

"Don't you fear the privateers?" asks the inquiring mind.

"I jest of them," answers the dauntless traveller. "My vessel is armed in man of war. I have a vigilant and courageous equipage, and the ammunitions don't want me its."

"Never have you not done wreck?" the inquirer proceeds, determined to make his friend as uncomfortable as possible on starting.

"That it has arrived me twice;" and here the conversation ends, it being plainly impossible to flutter this calm, courageous soul.

There is, however, one danger of the deep not here alluded to, which I have

found in the realization more terrible than pirates, storm, or fog. This is the presence of an infant of tender years in an adjoining state-room. That a passenger should chance to be thus situated is not a matter of great surprise, nor would it in ordinary circumstances be one of just complaint. The ship is swarming with children, from infants in arms to a lusty contingent who when the deck is wet, as not infrequently happens, take possession of our chairs and run them up and down the slippery boards. It seems to be the correct thing for American infants to be teethed on the Atlantic or weaned on a White Star Liner.

During the first days of the voyage I looked for a sensible diminution of numbers among the elder children owing to natural causes. The boundless hospitality of the ship concentrates itself in a succession of mighty efforts at half-past seven in the morning, at noon, and at five o'clock to fill these children up. To see them at breakfast, dinner, or tea it would reasonably be supposed that the effort would be more than successful. But ten minutes after any meal you shall behold a cluster of small boys and girls at the foot of the staircase wheedling the second steward, a man of infinite, if mistaken, kindness, into