6 SUNSHINE AND SPORT IN 



travel. The sea-life is of necessity inane for all 

 who have no work to occupy their thoughts or 

 muscles. Some of the passengers make themselves 

 agreeable, others make their neighbours miserable, 

 chiefly by inventing all manner of small worries 

 where none exist. As David Harum says, it is 

 well for a dog to have a reasonable number of fleas 

 to prevent him from brooding over being a dog ; 

 but he at anyrate keeps his fleas to himself. People 

 on board ship do not. Some lie at full length on 

 deck-chairs, preferably in the way of our quoits or 

 golf; others stride grimly to and fro, as if goaded 

 by the remorse of crimes unspeakable. 



At this season of the year, the outward-bound 

 passenger list should be predominantly English, but 

 on this particular occasion a number of Americans 

 were returninof from a most successful Cunard 

 winter cruise in the Mediterranean. The American 

 contingent, which for obvious reasons interested me 

 the most, consisted for the most part of splendid 

 women, colourless men, and spoilt children. The 

 women were charming alike in mind and body, a 

 little autocratic with their nominal lords, but this, 

 since the "lords" seemed quite content, was no 

 affair of mine. These had the physique of 

 neurotics and the nervous, peevish manner of the 

 incurable, their complexion ansemic, and their 

 nerves overwrought. Doubtless many of them 

 were endowed with financial genius — one, I knew, 

 must be — but they contrived to hide their talents 

 under a singularly dull exterior. Their women folk, 

 on the other hand, were self-possessed, well- 

 informed, frank without being vulgar, doing justice 

 to the splendid jewels with which their husbands 



