he relations
I was leaving behind me. For on his trip around the world he was to
meet us in Australia! It was easier to leave him, easier to set out,
knowing that, thinking of that!

Wonderful places I went to, surely. And wonderful things I saw and
heard. But the most wonderful thing of all that I was to see or hear
upon that voyage I did not dream of nor foresee. How was a mortal man
to foresee? How was he to dream of it?

Could I guess that the very next time I set out from Dunoon pier the
peaceful Clyde would be dotted with patrol boats, dashing hither and
thither! Could I guess that everywhere there would be boys in khaki,
and women weeping, and that my boy, John----! Ah, but I'll not tell
you of that now.

Peaceful the Clyde had been, and peaceful was the Mersey when we
sailed from Liverpool for New York. I look back on yon voyage--the
last I took that way in days of peace. Next time! Destroyers to guard
us from the Hun and his submarines, and to lay us a safe course
through the mines. And sailor boys, about their guns, watching,
sweeping the sea every minute for the flash of a sneaking pirate's
periscope showing for a second above a wave!

But then! It was a quiet trip, with none but the ups and doons of
every Atlantic crossing--more ups than doons, I'm telling you!

I was glad to be in America again, glad to see once more the friends
I'd made. They turned out to meet me and to greet me in New York, and
as I travelled across the continent to San Francisco it was the same.
Everywhere I had friends; everywhere they came crowding to shake me
by the hand with a "How are you the day, Harry?"

It was a long trip, but it was a happy one. How long ago it seems
now, as I write, in this new day of war! How far away are all the
common, kindly things that then I did not notice, and that now I
would give the world and a' to have back again!

Then, everywhere I went, they pressed their dainties upon me whenever
I sat down for a sup and a bite. The board groaned with plenty. I was
in a rich country, a country where there was enough for all, and to
spare. And now, as I am writing I am travelling again across America.
And there is not enough. When I sit down at table there is a card of
Herbert Hoover's, bidding me be careful how I eat and what I choose.
Ay, but he has no need to warn me! Well I know the truth, and how
America is helping to feed her allies over there, and so must be
sparing herself.

To think of it! In