ass, and
comforts enough in the third to make the ship a wonder on that account
alone; but it was the first-class passengers, used as they were to all
the extravagant luxuries of modern civilized life, on whom the
discoveries of that first day of sun and wind in the Channel must have
come with the greatest surprise. They had heard the ship described as a
floating hotel; but as they began to explore her they must have found
that she contained resources of a perfection unattained by any hotel,
and luxuries of a kind unknown in palaces. The beauties of French
chateaux and of English country-houses of the great period had been
dexterously combined with that supreme form of comfort which the modern
English and Americans have raised to the dignity of a fine art. Such a
palace as a great artist, a great epicure, a great poet and the most
spoilt and pampered woman in the world might have conjured up from their
imagination in an idle hour was here materialized and set, not in a
fixed landscape of park and woodland, but on the dustless road of the
sea, with the sunshine of an English April pouring in on every side, and
the fresh salt airs of the Channel filling every corner with tonic
oxygen.

Catalogues of marvels and mere descriptions of wonders are tiresome
reading, and produce little effect on the mind; yet if we are to realize
the full significance of this story of the _Titanic_, we must begin as
her passengers began, with an impression of the lavish luxury and beauty
which was the setting of life on board. And we can do no better than
follow in imagination the footsteps of one ideal voyager as he must have
discovered, piece by piece, the wonders of this floating pleasure house.

If he was a wise traveller he would have climbed to the highest point
available as the ship passed down the Solent, and that would be the
boat-deck, which was afterwards to be the stage of so tragic a drama.
At the forward end of it was the bridge--that sacred area paved with
snow-white gratings and furnished with many brightly-polished
instruments. Here were telephones to all the vital parts of the ship,
telegraphs to the engine room and to the fo'c'stle head and
after-bridge; revolving switches for closing the water-tight doors in
case of emergency; speaking-tubes, electric switches for operating the
foghorns and sirens--all the nerves, in fact, necessary to convey
impulses from this brain of the ship to her various members. Behind the
bridge on