One could easily imagine one’s self a guest at a summer house-party--the decks some great verandas overlooking an illimitable lawn of the bluest blue, so quiet is the water. For dinner the gentlemen wear their dinner coats, the ladies make careful toilets, and Englishmen who have lived in India wear dress suits of white linen with short jackets and broad sashes of rich silk. [Illustration: HARBOR, ST. VINCENT, CAPE VERDE ISLANDS.] At least four days before the equator is reached the young people, with the assistance of the officers, make out a two days’ program of athletic sports. Every first-class passenger is asked to enter his name for one or more of the contests, and nearly all are obliging enough to do so. Then comes the fun of appointing judges and committees; the ladies search their trunks for ribbons for badges, and trinkets for prizes are selected. Then the two days of “sports.” The veterans’ race in which old men run who haven’t done it for years, and young men’s and young women’s and children’s, three-legged races and “obstacle races,” “potato races” and “thread-and-needle races,” and the ship’s company is going from side to side and up and down to watch it all, or try to win, or compliment the winners. Well! you will have your exercise and many a good laugh, and in the evening the prizes will be distributed in the music-room by the captain or the most distinguished passenger. After dinner you will watch the phosphorescent water gleaming like a trail of fire at the stern, take more walks with the promenaders around the decks, and repair to the music-room where your talented fellow-passengers are sure to furnish a concert, including everything from the classics to Irish ballads and college songs. Even a prestidigitator may give you a performance some night. Oh! you are all great friends now. The Portuguese Countess and you have been having an hour’s womanly visit; and you are anxious about the baby of the fascinating English wife of the Argentine ranchman who lives in such dignity in their little colony on the pampa. The baby feels the rapid change to summer heat, and you advise the mother to fill her rubber (hot) water-bag with ice-water and slip it under baby’s little pillow, and she thinks it might be well and says she has always heard the Americans were “keen after ice.” [Illustration: CABLE STATION, ST. VINCENT.] You will be glad to see land for a few hours, though it is a dreary, treeless spot, picturesque St. Vincent. Thirty-five English telegraph operators form the nucleus of the town and are there to repeat cablegrams from the systems of wires which center there in mid-ocean. At a center of information, yet what fearful isolation! Other steamers stop for coal as yours does.