ns, perhaps, than are mine to-day!
Well, yes; and that, too, is likely enough. At all events I
choose to thank my father for the fact that at no period of my life
have I cared to waste time over mere vapid trash, whether spoken or
printed.

Outside his own personal feelings and mental processes, the which he
never discussed with me, there was no set of subjects, I think, that
my father excluded from the range of our conversations. Indeed, I
think that in those last months of our life on the _Livorno_, he
talked pretty much as freely with me, and as variously, as he would
have talked with any friend of his own age. In the periods when we
were not together, he would be sitting at the saloon table, with paper
and pens before him, or pacing the seaward side of the poop, or lying
resting in his bunk, or on the deck. Frequent rest became increasingly
necessary for him. His strength seemed to fade out from him with the
mere effluxion of time. He often spoke to me of the curious effects
upon men's minds of the illusions we call nostalgia. But he allowed no
personal bearing to his remarks, and never hinted that he regretted
leaving England, or wished to return there.

Physically speaking, I doubt if any life could be much healthier than
ours was on the _Livorno_. Dress, for each of us alike, consisted of
two garments only, shirt and trousers. Unless when going inland for
some reason, we went always barefoot. Of what use could shoes be on
the _Livorno's_ decks--washed down with salt water every day--or the
white sands of the bay. Our dietary, though somewhat monotonous, was
quite wholesome. We lacked other vegetables, but grew potatoes,
pumpkins, and melons in plenty. Fresh fish we ate most days, and
butcher's meat perhaps twice or thrice a week. Purer air than that we
breathed and lived in no sanatorium could furnish, and the hours we
kept were those of the nursery; though, unfortunately, bed-time by no
means always meant sleeping-time for my father.

Withal, even my inexperience did not prevent my realisation of the
sinking, fading process at work in my father. Its end I did not
foresee. It would have gone hard with me indeed to have been
consciously facing that. But I was sadly enough conscious of the
process; and a competent housewife would have found humorous pathos,
no doubt, in my efforts, by culinary means, to counteract this. My
father's appetite was capricious, and never vigorous. There was a
considerable period in