LUSITANIA.
_Fourth day out_.

Dearest Mamma,--It is perfectly delightful being at sea--in this
ship--because you don't really know you are on the hateful element. We have
a charming suite with two real windows and beds, and even Agnès has not
grumbled. There are lots of American on board, and really these travelling
ones are quite as bad as the awful English people one meets on the
Continent, only instead of having stick out teeth and elephants' feet,
their general shapes are odd. It appears as if in the beginning Peter, or
someone, called up to the Creator that so many thousands of arms and legs
and bodies and heads were wanted to make this new nation, and so the
requisite amount were pitched down and then joined up without anyone's
worrying to get them en suite. Thus A seems to have received B's head with
C's arms, his own body and D's legs--and so on; not the least thought shown
in their construction. They seem rough-hewn--with foreheads too prominent
or noses too big, or too square shoulders or too deep set eyes, nearly
always too something--and the women the same; whereas the children (there
are only a few of them fortunately) are really impossible. There is one
family of the fattest boys you ever saw--simply like the pictures of the
fat boy of Peckham, and a little girl of six called Matilda. Matilda is
certainly over thirty in her conversation--she told me she was sick of
ocean travelling--her eighth voyage; and she was sick of the Continent,
too--you get no good candy there and her Momma did nothing but shop. She
has the voice of a young peacock and the repartee of a Dublin car
driver--absolutely "all there." They are fairly rich "store keepers" from
Buffalo. The mother has nerves, the father dyspepsia and the nurse is
seasick, so Matilda is quite her own mistress, and rushes over the entire
ship conversing with everyone. She is most amusing for a short time, if it
were not pathetic. She plays off one fat boy (cousins they are of hers)