His French waistcoats develop an unexpected garishness on being
displayed away from their native habitat and the writing outfit
which he picked up in Vienna turns out to be faulty and treacherous
and inkily tearful. How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to
have a fountain pen--that weeps! And why, when a fountain pen makes
up its mind to cry a spell, does it crawl clear across a steamer
trunk and bury its sobbing countenance in the bosom of a dress
shirt?
Likewise the first few days at sea provide opportunity for sorting
out the large and variegated crop of impressions a fellow has been
acquiring during all these crowded months. The way the homeward-bound
one feels now, he would swap any Old Master he ever saw for one
peep at a set of sanitary bath fixtures. Sight unseen, he stands
ready to trade two cathedrals and a royal palace for a union depot.
He will never forget the thrill that shook his soul as he paused
beneath the dome of the Pantheon; but he feels that, not only his
soul but all the rest of him, could rally and be mighty cheerful
in the presence of a dozen deep-sea oysters on the half shell
--regular honest-to-goodness North American oysters, so beautifully
long, so gracefully pendulous of shape that the short-waisted
person who undertakes to swallow one whole does so at his own peril.
The picture of the Coliseum bathed in the Italian moonlight will
ever abide in his mind; but he would give a good deal for a large
double sirloin suffocated Samuel J.
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