We have been going day and night since we left Queenstown harbour at an average rate of 18 (land) miles an hour. We are more than 1300 passengers (roughly 200 saloon, and the rest steerage), whose baggage, when added to the large cargo of dry goods we are carrying, sinks our beautiful craft till she draws 24 feet of water. She herself is more than 150 yards long, and weighs as she passes Sandy Hook,--well, I am fairly unable to calculate what she weighs, but as much, at any rate, as half a dozen luggage-trains on shore. We have had our last, or the captain’s dinner, at which fish, to all appearance as fresh as if the sailors had just caught them over the side, and lettuces, as crisp as if the steward had a nursery garden down below, have been served as part of a dinner which would have done no discredit to a first-class hotel; beginning with two sorts of soup, and ending with two sorts of ices. Similar dinners, with other meals to match--four solid ones in the twenty-four hours, besides odds and ends--have been served day by day, without a hitch, in a cabin kept as sweet as Atlantic air, constantly pumped into it by the engine, can make it. By the way, sir, I may remark here, in connection with our feeding, that if we might be taken as average specimens of our race, there is no ground whatever for anxiety as to the Anglo-Saxon digestion, of which some disagreeable philosophers have spoken with disrespect and foreboding in recent years. There were, perhaps, ten persons whose native tongue was not English, and yet we carried our four solid meals a day with resolution bordering on the heroic. The racks were never on the tables, and we had only for a few hours a swell, which thinned our ranks for two meals; and yet when I look round, and make such inquiry as I can, I can see or hear of nothing more than a very slight trace of dyspepsia here and there. The principal change I remarked in the manners and customs on the voyage was the marked increase of play and betting on board. When I first crossed, ten years ago, there was nothing more than an occasional game at whist in the saloon or smoking-room. This voyage it was not easy to get out of the way of hard play except on deck. The best corner of the smoking-room was occupied from breakfast till “Out lights” by a steady poker party, and other smaller and more casual groups played fitfully at the other tables. There were always whist and other games going on in the saloon, but of a soberer and (in a pecuniary sense) more innocent character. There were “pools” of a sovereign or a half sovereign on every event of the day, “the run” being the most exciting issue. The drawer of the winning number seldom pocketed less than £40, when it was posted on the captain’s chart at noon. I heard that play is rather favoured now than otherwise on all the lines, as a percentage is almost always paid to the funds of the Sailors’ Orphan Asylum, for which excellent charity a collection is also legitimately