And,
being pretty tolerably homesick by that time, we leaned in toward
a common center and gave three loud, vehement cheers for the land
of the country sausage and the home of the buckwheat cake--and,
as giants refreshed, went on our ways rejoicing.
That, though, was to come later. At present we are concerned with
the trip over and what we had severally learned from it. I
personally had learned, among other things, that the Atlantic
Ocean, considered as such, is a considerably overrated body.
Having been across it, even on so big and fine and well-ordered a
ship as this ship was, the ocean, it seemed to me, was not at all
what it had been cracked up to be.
During the first day out it is a novelty and after that a
monotony--except when it is rough; and then it is a doggoned
nuisance. Poets without end have written of the sea, but I take
it they stayed at home to do their writing. They were not on the
bounding billow when they praised it; if they had been they might
have decorated the billow, but they would never have praised it.
As the old song so happily put it: My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean!
And a lot of others have lied over it too; but I will not--at least
not just yet. Perhaps later on I may feel moved to do so; but at
this moment I am but newly landed from it and my heart is full of
rankling resentment toward the ocean and all its works.
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