stars in the ocean as we hurried through the black night on the
good ship Espagne. We had just folded away a fine Sunday dinner, a
French Sunday dinner, beginning with onion soup which was strange;
and as ominous of our journey into the Latin world as a blast
of trumpets opening a Wagnerian overture. Indeed that onion soup
was threaded through our whole trip like a motif. Our dinner that
night ended in cheese and everything. It was our first meal aboard
the boat. During two or three courses, we had considered the value
of food as a two-way commodity--going down and coming up--but
later in the dinner we ordered our food on its merits as a one-way
luxury, with small thought as to its other uses. So we leaned against
the rail in the night and thought large thoughts about Wichita and
Emporia.

Here we were, two middle-aged men, nearing fifty years, going out
to a ruthless war without our wives. We had packed our own valises
at the hotel that very morning in fear and trembling. We realized
that probably we were leaving half our things in closets and
drawers and were taking the wrong things with us, and checking the
right things in our trunks at our hotels in New York. We had some
discussion about our evening clothes, and on a toss-up had decided
to take our tails and leave our dinner coats in the trunks. But
we didn't know why we had abandoned our dinner coats. We had no
accurate social knowledge of those things. Henry boasted that his
wife had taught him a formula that would work in the matter of white
or black ties with evening clothes. But it was all complicated with
white vests and black vests and sounded like a corn remedy; yet it
was the only sartorial foundation we had. And there we were with
land out of sight, without a light visible on the boat, standing
in the black of night leaning over the rail, looking at the stars