American on this boat I'm ridden by the curse of self-consciousness; you see it so clearly when three hundred of you are penned up for a week together,—and that's the first thing I have to outgrow. Perhaps that's all I shall accomplish! The soul I'm in search of may be like the poor stoker who tried to jump overboard yesterday. On some incongruous urge he threw his suitcase into the sea first, and-as he was climbing the rail to follow it, he was pulled back by the ship's barber and hustled below. Meanwhile a confused report of the event reached the bridge with the astonishing rapidity inherent in such bits of news. The officer on duty gave an order to lower the life-boat. The ship cut a beautiful circle, the sea was strewn with beautiful life-buoys, imaginative passengers pointed out the poor man's head in the water, and a boatful of sailors went grimly to the rescue of one dilapidated, imitation leather portmanteau, while the distraught devil who was theoretically drowning was being pinned down in his bunk.
"So with me: in the watches of the night, as we glide toward Europe, I lie awake thinking my distraught soul may after all be safe in Boston while I fare heroically forth to its rescue in Paris, Oh, Geoffrey, to come back with a suitcase full of washing and find your poor creative urge locked up in the Harvard Union, dead or crazy!" ·······
