On our entering the waiting-room, I had already noticed that all the passengers conversed with one another in the same tongue, in a dialect of which I certainly recognised a word or two, but yet a foreign idiom to me. On asking my companion what countrymen those gentlemen were, I received the following reply: "They belong to all sorts of nations. That burly-looking gentleman yonder is a Russian; that ridiculous little man playing with his moustache and ogling all the ladies can only be a Frenchman; the other trunculant figure, who has paid the highest fare, is one of your own countrymen--a Dutchman; those two blue-eyed, flaxen-haired youngsters are Germans, and all the rest are English." "But how, then, is it that they all speak the same language?" "They speak the travelling dialect. In our modern days, when many people spend the greater portion of their time in travelling, and all nationalities continually mingle together, such an idiom was created almost spontaneously. True, it is as yet but a language in its infancy; but it will probably, at no great distance of time, become the universal tongue." I listened as attentively as I dared and could, and I observed very soon that the so-called travelling dialect was a mixture of various tongues, English though preponderating; and this I ascribed to the fact of the majority of the travelling public being generally Englishmen. No more War! As I looked about me, it so happened that my eye fell upon some wide tubes peeping out from the sides and the hold of the vessel. I first thought that these were a new kind of cannon; so I asked whether we were on board of a man-of-war? Miss Phantasia smiled, but her smile was a bitter one immediately followed by a sigh. "War!" she echoed, "those chivalrous times we only know from history; our modern men are manufacturers, merchants, engineers, scholars, legislators, and so forth; but as for soldiers--well, you may see them on the stage occasionally, but our numerous force of constables is the only approach to soldiery we have." "Is it possible?" cried I; "no more war, and no more standing armies! At last then the idea has triumphed of the peace-men, Cobden, Bright, and their followers; at last the present generation has acknowledged that war was an eternal disgrace to humanity, reducing reasoning men to the level of the unreasoning brute, and causing them to destroy each other's lives in the blindest fury, instead, alas! of dwelling together on this beautiful earth in unity, peace, and concord, for the promotion of mutual happiness!"