passion has you.

Poetry was a drug on the market. Nobody read it (or wrote it) these
days; and any one who attempted to sell it was clearly mad. Oh, a
jingle for Punch might pass, you know; something clever, with a snapper
to it. But epic poetry? Sonnets? Why, didn't you know that there
wasn't a magazine going that did not have some sub-editor who could
whack out fourteen lines in fourteen minutes, whenever a page needed
filling up? These things he had been told times without number. And
Maundering, Piffle and Drool had long since cornered the romance
market. The King's Highway had become No Thoroughfare.

America. He would go to the land of the brave (when occasion demanded)
and the free (if you were imaginative). Having packed his trunk and
valise, he departed for Liverpool. Besides, America was all that was
left; he was at the end of his rope.

What a rollicking old fraud life was! Swung out of his peaceful orbit,
by the legerdemain of death; no longer a humble steady star but a
meteor; bumping as yet darkly against the planets; and then this
monumental folly which had returned him to the old orbit but still in
meteoric form, without peace or means of livelihood! An ass, indeed,
if ever there was one.

He eventually arrived at his destination, lied blithely to the chief
steward, and was assigned to the first-class cabins on the promenade
deck, simply because his manner was engaging and his face pleasing to
the eye. The sea? He had never been on it but once, and then only in
a rowboat. A good sailor? Perhaps. Chicken and barley broths at
eleven; the captain's table in the dining-saloon, breakfast, luncheon