"Are we in for a bad passage?" I asked.

"Don't know yet, sir; aren't seen all them on board yet. We had a
terrible passage the week afore last goin' East, but I expected it. We
'ad an Archbishop on board!"

I informed him that on the present journey we had two priests on board,
and two professional atheists--"so what kind of passage were we to
expect?"

After a moment's serious thought the mariner replied, "I think, sir, we
may reckon we shall have an average." And curious to relate we did.

The two Freethinkers who thus balanced the ecclesiastics were Messrs.
Foote and Watts, who were on a mission to America to induce Colonel
Robert G. Ingersoll to visit England.

The stranger in America, if he be a public man in his own country, is
treated like a suspected criminal. Every movement is watched, every
action reported, and as he passes from city to city a description and
report precedes him, and there is an eye, or rather a couple of dozen
eyes, to mark his coming and grow keener when he comes.

But he is watched by friends, not by detectives, and his actions are
reported in public prints, not in private ledgers. It is not the arm of
the law, but the hand of friendship, that shadows him, and those
stereotyped passports to friendship, letters of introduction from
friends at home, are as needless to introduce him as a life-preserver or
a Colt's revolver to protect him. He had better amuse himself while in
mid-ocean by presenting them to the porpoises that dive and splutter
round the ship, for the only object they will accomplish will be the
filling of his waste-paper basket on his return home.

[Illustration: AMERICAN INTERVIEWING--IMAGINARY.]

[Illustration: AMERICAN INTERVIEWING--REAL.]

Major Hospitality arrested me the moment I arrived, and handed me over
to the Inky Inquisition--eight gentlemen of the Press--who placed me on
the interviewer's rack at the demand of insatiable modern journalism. I
scraped through the ordeal as well as could be expected in the
circumstances, considering I hadn't yet acquired my land-legs. The
raging waves may roar their loudest, and the stormy winds may blow their
hardest, but they don't affect me. It is only when I find myself on
_terra firma_ once more that I feel any effects from an ocean trip. For
the benefit of those who are subject to _mal de mer_ I will disclose my
prescription to act as a reliable safeguard, and that is to mesmerise
yourself so that once on board no se