l take him about a week!"

Many people came to see us off at Liverpool, but I only remember seeing
Mrs. Langtry and Oscar Wilde. It was at this time that Oscar Wilde had
begun to curl his hair in the manner of the Prince Regent. "Curly hair
to match the curly teeth," said some one. Oscar Wilde _had_ ugly teeth,
and he was not proud of his mouth. He used to put his hand to his mouth
when he talked so that it should not be noticed. His brow and eyes were
very beautiful.

Well, I was not "disappointed in the Atlantic," as Oscar Wilde was the
first to say, though many people have said it since without
acknowledging its source.

My first voyage was a voyage of enchantment to me. The ship was laden
with pig-iron, and she rolled and rolled and rolled. She could never
roll too much for me! I have always been a splendid sailor, and I feel
jolly at sea. The sudden leap from home into the wilderness of waves
does not give me any sensation of melancholy.

What I thought I was going to see when I arrived in America I hardly
remember. I had a vague idea that all American women wore red flannel
shirts and carried bowie knives and that I might be sandbagged in the
street! From somewhere or other I had derived an impression that New
York was an ugly, noisy place.

Ugly! When I first saw that marvelous harbor I nearly cried--it was so
beautiful. Whenever I come now to the unequaled approach to New York I
wonder what Americans must think of the approach from the sea to London!
How different are the mean, flat, marshy banks of the Thames and the
wooden toy lighthouse at Dungeness to the vast, spreading Hudson with
its busy multitude of steamboats, and ferryboats, its wharf upon wharf,
and its tall statue of Liberty dominating all the racket and bustle of
the sea traffic of the world!

That was one of the few times in America when I did not miss the poetry
of the past. The poetry of the present, gigantic, colossal and enormous,
made me forget it. The "sky-scrapers"--what a brutal name it is when one
comes to think of it!--so splendid in the landscape now, did not exist
in 1883, but I find it difficult to divide my early impressions from my
later ones. There was Brooklyn Bridge though, hung up high in the air
like a vast spider's web.

Between 1883 and 1893 I noticed a great change in New York and other
cities. In ten years they seemed to have grown with the energy of
tropical plants. But between 1893 and 1907 I saw no evidence of su