I awoke at three-thirty this morning to find the cabin insufferably hot and opened the port-hole which is directly above my berth. The majority of the ocean immediately left its usual haunts and came indoors. Yale and Harvard were given a shower bath and I had a choice of putting on the driest things I could find and going on deck or drowning where I lay. The former seemed the preferable course. Out there I found several fellow voyagers asleep in their chairs and a watchman in a red-and-white tam-o’-shanter scanning the bounding main for old Hans W. Periscope. I wanted sympathy, but the watchman informed me that he ne comprended pas anglais, monsieur. So we stood there together and scanned, each in his own language. My garçon de cabine promises he will have me thoroughly bailed out by bedtime to-night. I sat at a different breakfast table, but there was no want of entertainment. At my side was a master of both anglais and français, and opposite him an American young lady who thinks French is simply just impossible to learn. “Mademoiselle,” says he, “must find it difficult to get what she likes to eat.” “I certainly do,” says she. “I don’t understand a word of what’s on the menu card.” “Perhaps I can help mademoiselle,” says he. “Would she like perhaps a grapefruit?” She would and she’d also like oatmeal and eggs and coffee. So he steered her straight through the meal with almost painful politeness, but in the intervals when he wasn’t using his hands as an aid to gallant discourse, he was manicuring himself with a fork. [Illustration: The majority of the ocean immediately left its usual haunts and came indoors] This afternoon they drug me into a bridge game. My partner was our congressman’s secretary. Our opponents were a Standard Oil official and a vice-consul bound for Italy. My partner’s middle name was Bid and Mr. Oil’s was Double. And I was too shy to object when they said we’d play for a cent a point. At the hour of going to press, Standard Oil had practically all the money in the world. And my partner has learned that a holding of five clubs doesn’t demand a bid of the same amount. _Sunday, August 12._ The boat seems to be well supplied with the necessities of life, such as cocktails and cards and chips, but it is next to impossible to obtain luxuries like matches, ice-water and soap. Yale and Harvard both knew enough to bring their own soap, but my previous ocean experiences were mostly with the Old Fall River Line, on which there wasn’t time to wash. Neither Yale nor Harvard ever takes a hint. And “Apportez-moi du savon, s’il vous plaît,” to the cabin steward is just as ineffectual. All good people attended service this morning, and some bad ones played poker this afternoon. In a burst of generosity I invited a second-class French young lady of five summers to have some candy. She accepted, and her acceptance led to the discovery that the ship’s barber is also its candy salesman.