ve you
birth."

The steamer's benches were ranged back to back across the deck. My back
hair was mingling innocently with the back hair of a couple of
ladies. Presently they were addressed by some one and I overheard this
conversation:

"You are Americans, I think? So'm I."

"Yes--we are Americans."

"I knew it--I can always tell them. What ship did you come over in?"

"CITY OF CHESTER."

"Oh, yes--Inman line. We came in the BATAVIA--Cunard you know. What kind
of a passage did you have?"

"Pretty fair."

"That was luck. We had it awful rough. Captain said he'd hardly seen it
rougher. Where are you from?"

"New Jersey."

"So'm I. No--I didn't mean that; I'm from New England. New Bloomfield's
my place. These your children?--belong to both of you?"

"Only to one of us; they are mine; my friend is not married."

"Single, I reckon? So'm I. Are you two ladies traveling alone?"

"No--my husband is with us."

"Our whole family's along. It's awful slow, going around alone--don't
you think so?"

"I suppose it must be."

"Hi, there's Mount Pilatus coming in sight again. Named after Pontius
Pilate, you know, that shot the apple off of William Tell's head.
Guide-book tells all about it, they say. I didn't read it--an American
told me. I don't read when I'm knocking around like this, having a good
time. Did you ever see the chapel where William Tell used to preach?"

"I did not know he ever preached there."

"Oh, yes, he did. That American told me so. He don't ever shut up
his guide-book. He knows more about this lake than the fishes in it.
Besides, they CALL it 'Tell's Chapel'--you know that yourself. You ever
been over here before?"

"Yes."

"I haven't. It's my first trip. But we've been all around--Paris and
everywhere. I'm to enter Harvard next year. Studying German all the time
now. Can't enter till I know German. This book's Otto's grammar. It's a
mighty good book to get the ICH HABE GEHABT HABEN's out of. But I don't
really study when I'm knocking around this way. If the notion takes me,
I just run over my little old ICH HABE GEHABT, DU HAST GEHABT, ER HAT
GEHABT, WIR HABEN GEHABT, IHR HABEN GEHABT, SIE HABEN GEHABT--kind of
'Now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep' fashion, you know, and after that, maybe
I don't buckle to it for three days. It's awful undermining to the
intellect, German is; you want to take it in small doses, or first you
know your brains all run together, and you feel them sloshing aroun