ean that I care nothing at all for a whale's opinion, for that
would be going to too great a length. Of course, it is better to have
the good opinion of a whale than his disapproval; but my position is
that if you cannot have a whale's good opinion, except at some sacrifice
of principle or personal dignity, it is better to try to live without
it. That is my idea about whales.

Yes, I have gone over that same route so often that I know my way
without a compass, just by the waves. I know all the large waves and a
good many of the small ones. Also the sunsets. I know every sunset and
where it belongs just by its color. Necessarily, then, I do not make the
passage now for scenery. That is all gone by.

What I prize most is safety, and in, the second place swift transit
and handiness. These are best furnished, by the American line, whose
watertight compartments have no passage through them; no doors to be
left open, and consequently no way for water to get from one of them to
another in time of collision. If you nullify the peril which collisions
threaten you with, you nullify the only very serious peril which attends
voyages in the great liners of our day, and makes voyaging safer than
staying at home.

When the Paris was half-torn to pieces some years ago, enough of the
Atlantic ebbed and flowed through one end of her, during her long agony,
to sink the fleets of the world if distributed among them; but she
floated in perfect safety, and no life was lost. In time of collision
the rock of Gibraltar is not safer than the Paris and other great ships
of this line. This seems to be the only great line in the world that
takes a passenger from metropolis to metropolis without the intervention
of tugs and barges or bridges--takes him through without breaking bulk,
so to speak.

On the English side he lands at a dock; on the dock a special train is
waiting; in an hour and three-quarters he is in, London. Nothing could
be handier. If your journey were from a sand-pit on our side to a
lighthouse on the other, you could make it quicker by other lines, but
that is not the case. The journey is from the city of New York to the
city of London, and no line can do that journey quicker than this one,
nor anywhere near as conveniently and handily. And when the passenger
lands on our side he lands on the American side of the river, not in
the provinces. As a very learned man said on the last voyage (he is head
quartermaster of the New York