Page:Percival Lowell - an afterglow.djvu/78

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Percival Lowell


AM BORD DES SCHNELLDAMPFERS "DEUTSCHLAND"

A smooth, neutral-tinted voyage; the first three days as hot as Tophet. My blue silk jacket too warm. Wanted to reduce myself to my lowest terms and then get rid of some of them. Not a soul on board I know. Sit opposite Julia Marlowe who has never once appeared at table. Have had chats with her manager of a theatrically intimate character. He has hoped to get her down for the sake of the bashful doctor at whose table we sit and who wants to see her. Last evening the Captain asked me to come to his cabin for coffee. There were others; among them Mrs. and Miss Cramp of Philadelphia and a Mr. and Mrs. Wallach Goodrich of Boston. Of deck friends made and extended elsewhere, there are a few and as the Germans say sonst nicht. Life in bits as usual with life; oases of episode strung on the desert of existence.

We expect to be in Plymouth Bay on Wednesday morning.

We are now three-quarters way across, the only motion so far being made by the ship. Even so it is not so hard to write as on the transcontinental trains.

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