Heretofore, being a sea-gull
seemed to you to have few attractions as a regular career, except
that it keeps one out in the open air; otherwise it has struck you
as being rather a monotonous life with a sameness as to diet which
would grow very tiresome in time. But now you envy that sea-gull,
for he comes direct from the shores of the United States of America
and if so minded may turn around and beat you to them by a margin
of hours and hours and hours. Oh, beauteous creature! Oh, favored
bird!
Comes the day before the last day. There is a bustle of getting
ready for the landing. Customs blanks are in steady demand at the
purser's office. Every other person is seeking help from every
other person, regarding the job of filling out declarations. The
women go about with the guilty look of plotters in their worried
eyes. If one of them fails to slip something in without paying
duty on it she will be disappointed for life. All women are natural
enemies to all excise men. Dirk, the Smuggler, was the father of
their race.
Comes the last day. Dead ahead lies a misty, thread-like strip
of dark blue, snuggling down against the horizon, where sea and
sky merge.
You think it is a cloud bank, until somebody tells you the glorious
truth. It is the Western Hemisphere--your Western Hemisphere.
It is New England. Dear old New England! Charming people--the New
Englanders! Ah, breathes there the man with soul so dead who never
to himself has said, this is my own, my native land? Certainly
not.
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