FROM LONDON TO NEW YORK. 251 



state-room floor. Nearly every day they would break 

 from their fastenings under my berth and start on a 

 wild race for the opposite side of the room. Natur- 

 ally enough the little trunk would always get the 

 start of the big one, but the big one followed close 

 and sometimes caught the little one in a very uncom- 

 fortable manner. Once a knife and fork and a break- 

 fast plate slipped off the sofa and joined in the race, 

 but if not distanced they got sadly the worst of it, 

 especially the plate. But the carpet had the most 

 reason to complain. Two or three turns sufficed to 

 loosen it from the floor, when, shoved to one side, the 

 two trunks took turns in butting it. I used to allow 

 this sport to go on till it grew monotonous, when I 

 would alternately shout and ring until " Robert " 

 appeared and restored order. 



The condition of certain picture-frames and vases 

 and other frail articles among my effects, when I 

 reached home, called to mind not very pleasantly this 

 trunkeu frolic. 



It is impossible not to sympathize with the ship in 

 her struggles with the waves. You are lying there 

 wedged into your berth, and she seems indeed a thing 

 of life and conscious power. She is built entirely of 

 iron, is 500 feet long, and besides other freight car- 

 ries 2,oOO tons of railroad iron which lies down there 

 flat in her bottom, a dead, indigestible weight, so un- 

 like a cargo in bulk, yet she is a quickened spirit for 

 all that. You feel every wave that strikes her, you 

 feel the sea bearing her down, she has run her nose 



