with him; they're both unmarried, and well over thirty, teachers in a
small Western college, and are starting out on their "Sabbatical year."
Seeing them together has made me think a lot about you, and wish you were
along; they've very little money, and have never been to Europe before,
and almost every night they sit down and figure out how they're going to
get the most out of their trip, trying new plans and itineraries all the
time. They get into such gales of laughter over it that you'd think being
poor was the greatest fun in the world, and the tales they've told about
working their way through high school and college, and saving up to come
to Europe, would be pathetic if they weren't so screamingly funny. I
haven't been gone very long yet, I know, but it's been long enough for me
to decide that Sylvia sent me off, not primarily to buy cows and study
agriculture, but to learn a few things that will be a darned sight better
worth knowing than that even, and--_to have a good time_! In the hope, of
course, that I'll come home, not only less green, but less cussedly
disagreeable.

Mr. Stevens has crossed on this boat twice, and introduced me to both
the captain and the chief engineer before I started; they've both been
awfully kind to me, and I've seen the "inwards and outwards" of the ship
from garret to cellar, so to speak, and learned enough about navigation
and machinery to make me want to learn a lot more. But even without all
this, there would have been plenty to do. This isn't a "fashionable
line," so they say, but it's a good deal more fashionable than anything
we ever saw in Hamstead, Vermont! There's dancing every evening--not a
bit like what we have at home, and it really made me gasp a little at
first--you thought I was hard to shock, too, didn't you? Well, believe
me, I blushed the first time I discovered that I was expected to hold my
partner so tight that you couldn't get a sheet of paper between us.
However, I soon stopped blushing, and bent all my energies to the