English ways and by-ways : $b Being the letters of John and Ruth Dobson written from England to their friend, Leighton ParksParks, Leighton
General
English ways and by-ways : $b Being the letters of John and Ruth Dobson written from England to their friend, Leighton Parks
Parks, Leighton
Automobile travel -- Fiction; England -- Description and travel -- Fiction; Epistolary fiction
You have crossed the North Atlantic too often to be bothered with an
account of our trip. We ate too much--indeed, I am told the
temptation to do so is greater on these boats than on any except
those of the French Line--and also we took too little exercise. And
yet we seem none the worse for it! Possibly that was due, in my
case, to the fact that I slept a great deal, and that when I was not
sleeping or eating I lay in my deck-chair and wondered how any one
could ever worry! Is it not surprising how the petty worries of life
drop overboard at Sandy Hook? This cannot be true, I suppose, of the
foolish men who keep in touch with the office by wireless, but it was
true of us. Yet one day I was startled by hearing my name called by
a page, who ran along the deck with a slip of paper in his hand.
Fortunately, it was only a word of greeting from the Stoddards, who
were returning on the _France_, and sent us a message of good-will.
I did, however, have certain experiences which were unusual. The
first night out I was sitting in the drafty and fearfully decorated
smoking-room when a man approached me and asked if I would take a
hand at poker. I declined politely but he insisted, urging that it
was "only a friendly game, twenty-five cents a point." I again
declined, saying I did not play. He returned to his friend and
remarked in a loud tone: "De trouble mit men who hafe lifed all der
lives in a village is dat ven dey meet a stranger, dey tink he must
be a con man."
On Sunday morning we were wakened by the band, which played,
beautifully, "Ein Feste Burg." I supposed that would be the only
Sunday observance, and was not a little surprised to receive a
message from the captain, asking me to hold service in the Lounge.
This I did, the full band assisting. There were a number of
Americans aboard, and most of them attended. But what surprised me
greatly was to notice a number of Jews, several of whom later spoke
to me and expressed their satisfaction. They said that they did not
know that we used the Old Testament in our service! I asked one of
them, a cultivated man, if he attended the synagogue. He shook his
head sadly and said, not since he was a boy, unless it were to go to
a funeral, and added that this was true of thousands of cultivated
Jews. I said it seemed to me a dreadful thing that the race which
had given the greatest spiritual gifts to mankind should be losing
interest in the highest ideals of life, and asked if it were not
possible for them to find in some form of Christianity, which, after
all, was an evolution of Judaism, the satisfaction their souls must
crave. He looked at me for a moment, and then said bitterly: "If
Christians began by treating us as if we were human, perhaps we might
be willing to listen to their gospel of brotherhood." I wonder if,
instead of a Society for the Conversion of the Jews, we do not need a
Society for the Conversion of Christians!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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