more than I do, and he is so slow
about giving up meals that he has paid for, that it takes him longer to
commune with nature, and he groans so, and swears some.

[Illustration: I am sorry for dad, because he holds more than I do 074]

I don't see how a person can swear when he is seasick on the ocean, with
no sure thing that he will ever see land again, and a good prospect of
going to the bottom, where you got to die in the arms of a devil fish,
with a shark biting pieces out of your tender loin and a smoked halibut
waiting around for his share of your corpse, and whales blowing syphons
of water and kicking because they are so big that they can't get at you
to chew cuds of human gum, and porpoises combing your damp hair with
their fine tooth comb fins, and sword fish and sawtooth piscatorial
carpenters sawing off steaks. Gee, but it makes me crawl. I once saw a
dead dog in the river, with bull heads and dog-fish ripping him up the
back, and I keep thinking I had rather be that dog, in a nice river at
home, with bullheads that I knew chewing me at their leisure, than to be
a dead boy miles down in the ocean, with strange fish and sea serpents
quarreling over the tender pieces in me. A man told me that if you smoke
cigarets and get saturated with nickoteen, and you are drownded, the
fish will smell of you, and turn up their noses and go away and leave
your remains, so I tried a cigaret, and, gosh, but I had rather be et
by fish than smoke another, on an ocean steamer. It only added to my
sickness, and I had enough before. I prayed some, when the boat stood on
its head and piled us all up in the front end, but a chair struck me on
the place where Fitzsimmons hit Corbett, and knocked the prayer all out
of me, and when the boat stood on her butt end and we all slid back the
whole length of the cabin, and I brought up under the piano, I tried to
sing a hymn, such as I used to in the 'Piscopal choir, before my voice
changed, but the passengers who were alive yelled for some one to choke
me, and I didn't sing any more. Dad was in the stateroom when we were
rolling back and forth in the cabin, and between sicknesses he came
out to catch me and take me into the stateroom, but he got the rolling
habit, too, and he rolled a match with an actress who was voyaging for
her health, and they got offully mixed up. He tried to rescue her, and
grabbed hold of her belt and was reeling her in all right, when a man
who said he was her husba