From the moment of sailing I am always impressed with the amusing terrestrial instincts of most human beings. They leave their fellows and the very wharf itself with regret, and no sooner are they surrounded by old ocean than their desires fly ahead to the day of freedom from this transitory aquatic prison. En route, every thought, every worry, every hope is centripetal. The littlenesses of ship life are magnified to subjects of vital importance, and so perennial and enthusiastic are these discussions that it seems as if the neighbor's accent, the daily dessert, the sempiternal post-mortem of the bridge game, the home life of the stewardess, must contain elements of greatness and goodness. With a few phonograph records it would not be a difficult matter to dictate in advance a satisfactory part in the average conversation at the Captain's table. The subjects, almost without exception, are capable of prediction, the remarks and points of view may be anticipated. Occasionally a passenger detaches his mind from the ship and its doings long enough to take note of something happening beyond the rail--some cosmic phenomenon which he indicates with unerring finger as a beautiful sunset, frequently reassuring himself of our recognition by a careful enumeration of his conception of the colors. Or a school of dolphins undulates through two mediums, and is announced, in a commendably Adam-like, but quite inaccurate spirit, as porpoises or young whales. Mercury, setting laggardly in the west, is gilded anew by our informant as a lightship, or some phare off Cape Imagination. We shall draw a veil or go below, when an "average citizen" begins to expound the stars and constellations. All this is only amusing, and with the limited interest in the ship and the trip which the usual passenger permits himself, he still derives an amazing amount of pleasure from it all. It is a wonderful child-like joy, whether of convincingly misnaming stars, enthusiastically playing an atrocious game of shuffle-board, or estimating the ship's log with methods of cunning mathematical accuracy, but hopeless financial results. All these things I have done and shall doubtless continue to do on future voyages, but there is an additional joy of striving to break with precedent, to concentrate on the alluring possibilities of new experiences, new discoveries, on board ship. If the vessel is an oasis in a desert, or in a "waste of waters" as is usually announced at table about the second or third day out, then I am a true Arab, or, to follow more closely the dinner simile, a Jonah of sorts, for my interest is so much more with the said waste, or the things in it and above it, than with my swathed, hibernating fellow mortals.