he editor of The Evangelist, John
Russell, a Boston Democrat, who was in Congress and who has been in
public life for over forty years. A Tammany sachem, who looks like and
worships Tweed, and who says what I never heard an American off the
stage say: "That's me. That's what I do," he says. "When I have
insomnia, I don't believe in your sleeping draughts. I get up and go
round to Jake Stewart's on Fourteenth Street and eat a fry or a
porterhouse steak and then I sleep good---that's me." There is also a
lively lady from Albany next to me and her husband, who tells anecdotes
of the war just as though it had happened yesterday. Indeed, they are
all so much older than I that all their talk is about things I never
understood the truth about, and it is most interesting. I really do
not know when I have enjoyed my meal time so much. The food is very
good, although queer and German, and we generally take two hours to
each sitting. Dr. Field is my especial prey and he makes me laugh
until I cry. He is just like James Lewis in "A Night Off," and is
always rubbing his hands and smacking his lips over his own daring
exploits. I twist everything he says into meaning something dreadful,
and he is instantly explaining he did not really see a bullfight, but
that he walked around the outside of the building. I have promised to
show him life with a capital L, and he is afraid as death of me. But
he got back at me grandly last night when he presented a testimonial to
the captain, and referred to the captain's wife and boy whom he is
going to see after a two years' absence, at which the captain wept and
everybody else wept. And Field, seeing he had made a point, waved his
arms and cried, "I have never known a man who amounted to anything who
had not a good wife to care for--except YOU--" he shouted, pointing at
me, "and no woman will ever save YOU." At which the passengers, who
fully appreciated how I had been worrying him, applauded loudly, and
the Doctor in his delight at having scored on me forgot to give the
captain his testimonial.

There are two nice girls on board from Chicago and a queer Southern
girl who paints pictures and sings and writes poetry, and who is
traveling with an odd married woman who is an invalid and who like
everyone else on board has apparently spent all her life away from
home. I have spent my odd time in writing the story I told Dad the
night before I sailed and I think it in some ways the best