AT SEA WITHOUT CLOTHES 



each other across the Atlantic, our boat getting in 

 first by hours. It wasn't funny though to be all the 

 time without a single thing except what I stood up in. 

 People helped a little. There was a nice girl on board 

 who lent me a pair of shoes and a pair of stockings so 

 that I could have a change. Willie Sims, the coloured 

 jockey, who was on the ship, let me have a few collars, 

 and I borrowed a tie, a new one, from someone else, and 

 I shall always remember that I have never returned 

 it. I got hold of a shirt from someone too, a flannel 

 one, and managed to turn out fairly respectably for 

 dinner, but I felt a bit out of it all the same. Of course 

 everyone dressed for dinner at my table on that 

 voyage; they would. 



The story got about in New York and of course 

 there were some funny pictures published. One 

 showed me beckoning to the Kaiser Wilhelm to come 

 alongside ; and great piles of baggage were drawn on 

 deck in a pile as high as the funnels of the big ship. 

 My luggage of course ! Just about this time too there 

 was a cartoon appeared in one of the dailies showing 

 " Uncle Sam " at Sandy Hook pulling me one way, 

 and " John Bull " on Land's End, England, hauling 

 the other. 



The papers were on the whole kind to me in those 

 early days, but as I have said, some of them used to 

 roast me a bit, trying to tear me down by ridicule. 

 For instance, Jean De Reszke had said he would like 

 to see me and one day I called on him at the Gilsey 

 House. The next morning one of the papers made 

 out that I said when I went into his apartment, 

 "Hullo, Jean." 



Hullo, Tod," they made him reply. 



Viho do you ride for ? " I was supposed to have 

 continued. 



85 





