d protested, but before
I knew what I was about a couple of them had pulled me up on the steps
and I was really "up against it," so I had to say something or beat an
ignominious retreat. I have always been in full sympathy with
disarmament and the reduction of naval fleets, so I told them I had just
returned from Spain, Italy and Turkey, and had there seen the armies
drilling and the idle navies anchored in the ports, for the most part at
the expense of the poor people, many of whom had neither food nor decent
clothing. At this point a young man called out:

"We are Englishmen--we want no Yankees here!"

I replied:

"Young man, you have made a bad start: I was born less than three hundred
miles from where I stand, and I visited this square many times before you
were born."

This statement was received with applause and I was allowed to finish
what little I had to say in peace. The meeting adjourned after
unanimously passing a resolution protesting against the _Dreadnaughts_.
Meetings of this character were held continuously all day.

[Illustration: THE BATHS OF CARACALLA, ROME, WHERE THE ROMANS HAD THE
BEST TIMES OF THEIR LIVES AND WERE ALWAYS IN THE PICTURE WHILE IT LASTED]

Then we took a new steamer to New York, and the cruise of the _Cork_ was
a thing of the past.

Retrospectively I might add that we suffered from a kind of artistic and
historical dyspepsia, brought about by our inability to digest the
immensity of the things we had seen and their variety. After leaving
Madeira the stopping places came so fast that our sightseeing was indeed
hard work, each new place blotting out the one that had preceded it.
Undoubtedly we would after a while remember the scenes and places
visited, and we would surely do so if we read the standard writers on
these subjects.

Of the management it may be said that it had a Herculean task to perform,
and its work was well done. If the amount of detail it had to face and
arrange had been placed in less skilful hands or neglected, it would have
been fatal to our comfort and progress.

My companions were on the whole a bright, alert and sympathetic company.
Here and there, of course, there was some friction; human nature, under
the strain put upon it by the length of the cruise and the number of
people, could not be expected by the most exacting critic to behave
better. The unimportant differences of opinion and misunderstandings
that arose under trying circumstances wil