And now, being through with our prologue of broad facts, let us pass to personal experiences of the voyage to Canada. That week’s imprisonment in a travelling hotel is, surely, the ideal holiday. Thrice have I crossed in the saloon and once in the steerage—and a button for the difference! In the great liners of to-day there are comfortable quarters and wholesome meals for everybody, whether he pays £18, £10s. 5s., or £5 15s. As a rule I find third-class emigrants more interesting to talk to than first-class poker-players. On the other hand, grand pianos are preferable to concertinas, and it is wondrous pleasant, when at sea, to stroll on Turkish carpets amid alcoves of growing ferns, palms and flowers; while I personally am alive to the advantages of a spacious smoking-room panelled in carved oak, a well-stocked library, and a writing lounge furnished with necessaries and taste (to glance at a few features of such floating temples of luxury as the _Royal George_). But air, sea and sky—the common property of all classes—are of chief account. Let me dip among the memories of my first crossing, which happened nearly nine years ago. For two days our ship was followed by a dozen gulls—strong birds, with yellow bodies, and having black tips to their long wings. By day they hovered in our wake, eager for whatsoever the cook might discard through a porthole; by night—I was invited to believe—they snatched a little slumber in the rigging. But those sturdy aviators did not accompany us all the way to Canada. You cannot see, you can only infer, that the Atlantic Ocean is large. At no time in any direction does the eye behold more sea than is visible from Hastings pier. During the long, luxurious day and all through the night the vessel goes on, on, and still on. The throbbing propeller makes with splashing water the music that lulls you to sleep at night, that greets your waking in the morning. For ever the sea is rushing by in frothy confusion. We career through a path mottled with foam. Between the whirling splashes and streaks of white the eye pierces a slatey-green, with the myriad tiny bubbles ascending as a grey cloud. You look in grateful silence upon the Atlantic skies—purples and lemon-yellow in the east, gold and flaming crimson in the west. Later joys are the moonshine and the phosphorous glowing on the busy, musical, unseen waves. One afternoon a little bird came to us, perching awhile on the bridge stairs. I did not see him, but they told me of his grey feathers fluttering deranged in the breeze, and the balance of testimony proclaimed him a sparrow. Wondrous welcome little visitor from the land. For to live nearly a week on the boundless sea is to find yourself with tender recollections of meadow and dell, of oak trees and the bumble bee.