ring
sight, and it was a pleasure to those of us who were lucky enough to
have our sealegs on to watch the big ship bury her nose in the
mountainous waves, scattering the spray in great clouds and then rising
again as buoyantly as the proverbial cork. The decks were not a pleasant
point of vantage, however, even for the most enthusiastic admirer of
nature, as a big wave would now and then break over the forward part of
the vessel, drenching everything and everybody within reach and making
the decks as slippery as a well-waxed ballroom.

I had quit smoking some time before starting on this trip and was
therefore deprived of blowing a cloud with which to drive dull care away
during the tedious days that followed. Like the rest of the party, too,
once started I was impatient to reach home again, and for that reason
the slow progress that we made the first few days was not greatly to my
liking. The weather moderated at the end of forty-eight hours, and
though the waves still wore their night-caps and were too playful to go
to bed, they occasioned us but little annoyance and we bowled along over
the Atlantic in merry fashion, killing time by spinning yarns, playing
poker and taking a turn at the roulette wheel which Fred Carroll had
purchased at Nice to remind him of his experience at Monte Carlo.

At a very early hour on Saturday morning, April 6, we were off Fire
Island, and sunrise found us opposite quarantine.

Our base-ball friends in New York, who had been looking for us for three
days, had been early apprised that the "Adriatic" had arrived off Sandy
Hook, and, boarding the little steamer "Starin" and the tug "George
Wood," they came down the bay, two hundred strong, to meet us. With the
aid of "a leedle Sherman pand," steam whistles and lusty throats they
made noise enough to bring us all on deck in a hurry. As the distance
between the vessels grew shorter we could distinguish among others the
faces of Marcus Meyer, W. W. Kelly, John W. Russel, Digby Bell, DeWolf
Hopper, Col. W. T. Coleman and many others, not least among them being
my old father, who had come on from Marshalltown to be among the first
to welcome myself and my wife back to America, and who, as soon as the
"Starin" was made fast, climbed on deck and gave us both a hug that
would have done credit to the muscular energy of a grizzly bear, but who
was no happier to see us than we were to see him and to learn that all
was well with our dear ones. I'm no