Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/485

does not sound as well as French or Italian. To a man who does not understand languages, the German sounds worst of all, unless it is the Russian. On the "Burgermeister," where we heard German constantly for more than three weeks, we used to laugh at its funny sounds. I know of no uglier sounding word than the German word "yaw," which means "yes." If I were a young man, and should propose to a young and beautiful German girl, and she should reply with what poets say is the sweetest of all words, yaw, I should feel disposed to run away to South America, or South Africa, or some other country where it is too hot. . . . I have never known anyone to struggle quite so hard against baldness as the barber on the "Canada." When his hair is in order, it looks all right, but the other morning, while I was being shaved, the window blew open, and the barber's hair went to pieces. He is bald, but has cultivated a lot of long hair on the side of his head which he combs over his baldness. The wind threw this long hair out of place, and as it flapped around, the barber was as flustrated as an old maid suddenly discovered in her night-gown. . . . Speaking of the barber reminds me that he says all the officers of the "Canada," except the captain, wanted more pay, a few months ago, and walked out just before the ship was to sail from Marseilles. The ship had a big lot of passengers aboard, but the general manager was stubborn, and he fooled around for a week before he could find another set of officers. . . . We hear on the upper deck that the six hundred Sicilians among the emigrants are not as good workers as the fourteen hundred Italians; and that in addition to being