But now you envy that sea-gull,
for he comes direct from the shores of the United States of America
and if so minded may turn around and beat you to them by a margin
of hours and hours and hours. Oh, beauteous creature! Oh, favored
bird!
Comes the day before the last day. There is a bustle of getting
ready for the landing. Customs blanks are in steady demand at the
purser's office. Every other person is seeking help from every
other person, regarding the job of filling out declarations. The
women go about with the guilty look of plotters in their worried
eyes. If one of them fails to slip something in without paying
duty on it she will be disappointed for life. All women are natural
enemies to all excise men. Dirk, the Smuggler, was the father of
their race.
Comes the last day. Dead ahead lies a misty, thread-like strip
of dark blue, snuggling down against the horizon, where sea and
sky merge.
You think it is a cloud bank, until somebody tells you the glorious
truth. It is the Western Hemisphere - your Western Hemisphere.
It is New England. Dear old New England! Charming people - the New
Englanders! Ah, breathes there the man with soul so dead who never
to himself has said, this is my own, my native land? Certainly
not. A man with a soul so dead as that would be taking part in a
funeral, not in a sea voyage. Upon your lips a word hangs poised.
What a precious sound it has, what new meanings it has acquired!
There are words in our language which are singular and yet sound
plural, such as politics and whereabouts; there are words which
are plural and yet sound singular, such as Brigham Young, and there
are words which convey their exact significance by their very
sound. They need no word-chandlers, no adjective-smiths to dress
them up in the fine feathers of fancy phrasing. They stand on
their own merits. You think of one such word - a short, sweet word
of but four letters. You speak that word reverently, lovingly,
caressingly.
Nearer and nearer draws that blessed dark blue strip. Nantucket
light is behind us. Long Island shoulders up alongside. Trunks
accumulate in gangways; so do stewards and other functionaries.
You have been figuring upon the tips which you will bestow upon
them at parting; so have they. It will be hours yet before we
land. Indeed, if the fog thickens, we may not get in before
to-morrow, yet people run about exchanging good-byes and swapping
visiting cards and promising one another they will meet again.
I think it is reckless for people to trifle with their luck that
way.
