Strand," and was being whirled over Waterloo Bridge, I said to myself, "Nothing has changed. Nothing has changed except that the fare, which was once eightpence, is now a shilling."

I said it again, with not quite the same certainty, when, after eating my piece of roast beef and a little mess of greens and a wonderful potato, I called the head waiter and complained that the meat was tough and stringy. "It is so," said that functionary; and he continued: "You see, sir, during the war we exhausted" (with careful emphasis upon the h) "our own English beef, and we are now forced to depend upon I looked him straight in the eye; he was going to say America, but changed his mind and said, "the Hargentine."

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"Very neatly done," I said, ordering an extra halfpint of bitter and putting a sixpence in his hand; "to-morrow I'll have fish. I'm very sure that nothing can have happened to the turbot."

It was only a little after one when, leaving Simpson's, I lit a cigar and turned westward in quest of lodgings. As the Savoy was near at hand, I thought no harm would be done by asking the price of a large double-bedded room overlooking the river, with a bath, and was told that the price would be five guineas a day, but that no such accommodation was at that moment available. "I'm glad of it," I said, feeling that a temptation had been removed; for I have always wanted a room which looked out on the river.

I continued westward, inquiring at one hotel after

another, until, just as I was beginning to feel · not alarmed but a trifle uneasy, I secured, not just what I wanted, but a room and a bath that would serve, at the Piccadilly.

I had been kept waiting quite a little time in the lobby, and as I looked about me there seemed to be a good many foreigners in evidence a number of Spaniards and, I suspected, Germans. A fine manly young fellow with only one arm (how many such I was to see!), who manipulated the lift and to whom I confided my suspicions, replied, "Yes, sir; I believe they is, sir; but what are you going to do? They calls themselves Swiss!"

But in my anxiety to get to London I have forgotten to say a word about the Imperator, on which I crossed, or about the needless expense and delay to which one is subjected in New York, for no reason that I can see but that some of what Mr. Bryan called "deserving Democrats" may be fed at the public trough.

After being photographed and getting your passport and having it viséd by the consul of the country to which you are first going, and after assuring the officials of the Treasury Department that the final installment of your income tax will be paid, when due, by your bank, though where the money is to come from, you don't in the least know,- you finally start for New York, to be there one day before the steamer sails, so that you may again present your passport at the Custom House for final inspection. I know no man wise enough to tell me what good purpose is

served by this last annoyance. With trunks and suitcases, New York is an expensive place in which to spend a night, and one is not in the humor for it: one has started for Europe and has reached - New York.

But, fearful that some hitch may occur, you wire on for rooms and get them, and on "the day previous to sailing," as the regulation demands, you present yourself and your wife, each armed with a passport, at the Custom House. Standing in a long line in a corridor, you eventually approach a desk at which sits a man consuming a big black cigar. Spreading out your passport before him, he looks at it as if he were examining one for the first time; finally with a blue pencil he puts a mark on it and says, "Take it to that gentleman over there," pointing across the room. You do so; and another man examines it, surprised, it may be, to see that it so closely resembles one that he has just marked with a red pencil. He is just about to make another hieroglyph on the passport, when he observes that the background of your photograph is dark, and the regulations call for light. He suspends the operation; is it possible that you will be detained at the last moment? No! with the remark "Get a light one next time," he makes a little mark in red and scornfully directs you to another desk. Here sits another man — these are all able-bodied and presumably well-paid politicians with a large rubber stamp; it descends, and you are free to go on board your ship - to-morrow.

The Imperator made, I think, only one trip in the

service of the company that built her; during the war she remained tied up to her pier in Hoboken; and when she was finally put into passenger service, she was taken over, pending final allocation, by the Cunard Line. She is a wonderful ship, with the exception of the Leviathan the largest boat afloat, magnificent and convenient in every detail, and as steady as a church. The doctor who examines my heart occasionally, looking for trouble, would have had a busy time on her; I fancy I can see him, drawing his stethoscope from his pocket and suspending it in his ears, poking round, listening in vain for the pulsation of her engines; no doubt fearful that he was going to lose his patient, he would have prescribed certain drops in water at regular intervals, and, finally, he would have sent her in a very large bill.

I am quite sure that I owe my comparatively good health to having been very abstemious in the matter of exercise. But it was my habit to take a constitutional each day before breakfast; this duty done, I was able to read and smoke thereafter with a clear conscience. Four and a half times around the promenade deck was a mile, the steward told me, and I can quite believe it. To relieve the monotony of this long and lonely tramp, I tried to learn by heart a letter which came to me just as we were sailing, in the form of a merry jingle, written by a master, or, should I say, a mistress of laughing rhyme, who loves to make fun of her friends. I never quite succeeded, but it reads this way :