THE POINT OF VIEW

by Henry James




I. FROM MISS AURORA CHURCH, AT SEA, TO MISS WHITESIDE, IN PARIS.



. . . My dear child, the bromide of sodium (if that's what you call
it) proved perfectly useless. I don't mean that it did me no good,
but that I never had occasion to take the bottle out of my bag. It
might have done wonders for me if I had needed it; but I didn't,
simply because I have been a wonder myself. Will you believe that I
have spent the whole voyage on deck, in the most animated
conversation and exercise? Twelve times round the deck make a mile,
I believe; and by this measurement I have been walking twenty miles
a day. And down to every meal, if you please, where I have
displayed the appetite of a fish-wife. Of course the weather has
been lovely; so there's no great merit. The wicked old Atlantic has
been as blue as the sapphire in my only ring (a rather good one),
and as smooth as the slippery floor of Madame Galopin's dining-room.
We have been for the last three hours in sight of land, and we are
soon to enter the Bay of New York, which is said to be exquisitely
beautiful. But of course you recall it, though they say that
everything changes so fast over here. I find I don't remember
anything, for my recollections of our voyage to Europe, so many
years ago, are exceedingly dim; I only have a painful impression