FROM NEW YORK TO NAPLES.

DECEMBER 10, '08.

We leave New York at noon. It is a perfect winter's day—the air cold and crisp, the sun brightly shining. There are all manner of craft in the North River, or Hudson, and our big ship makes her way among them with leisurely dignity. On our starboard is Jersey City; on the port side, the buildings of Old Manhattan raise their giant forms, fearfully and wonderfully tall. Presently we pass by the statue of Liberty, and leave the great metropolis of the New World behind. A marvellous city is New York, marching forward with gigantic strides to the forefront of the world's cities. Even now it is second only to London, and in ways not a few it is first. We pass out of the roar of its traffic, away from its teeming, busy life, and the restful ocean takes us to its heaving bosom.

"Our next port of call is Boston," says one passenger to another standing near him, just as we are getting out to sea. "Not at all," rejoins the other, "this boat doesn't call at Boston." An officer of the ship, who is standing by, is appealed to, and he bears out the first speaker. The news is received with surprise amounting almost to consternation. Hardly one of the passengers knew of this change in our programme of travel. Back to Boston; it is like going back home again! But to Boston we steer our course. Off Cape Cod, miles and miles out at sea, men are fishing in their dories. We pass within fifty yards of one, but so intent is he upon his work that he does not as much as cast one look at us. After a little we pick up our pilot, and begin threading our way through the narrow entrance to Boston harbour.

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DECEMBER 11.

Our ship is docked at Charlestown. We go ashore, take an "L" road car at City Square, and speedily reach Boston. Our friends in the city, to whom we bade farewell a few days before, are almost thunderstruck at seeing us. They can scarce believe their eyes. We seem to have dropped upon them from the skies, or rather to have been spirited back through space from the ocean. A few words clear up the mystery. Next morning (Saturday) we say an early Mass, and hasten back on board. But the good ship "Cretic" is in no hurry to put to sea. She lingers for a full hour beyond the allotted time. We could not have missed her if we tried.

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DECEMBER 12.

It is snowing heavily as we steam slowly out of Boston harbour. We drop our pilot, and at noon have the lightship abeam. At last we are fairly under way, but so thickly falls the snow that we move along at little more than half-speed, and the steamer's whistle keeps blowing as in a fog. After an hour or two we run out of the snowstorm, and the whistling ceases. A tugboat inward bound, towing three huge barges, is the last object we descry this day, for darkness soon settles upon the scene.

This evening I sit and listen dreamily to the soft accents of the Italian tongue. One or two of the saloon passengers are Italian and the ship's doctor is a native of the land of sunshine and song. It is twenty-five years since I dwelt in that land, but those intonations strike the ear and those inimitable gestures the eye as familiarly as if it were but yesterday. What a wonderful thing is memory! How it bridges the years, and brings the dead past to life again! By it we reverse the poet's process, and "stretch a hand through time to catch" the forms of things long passed away.

"Vedi Napoli e poi Mori." This, my Italian friend tells me, is the original of the saying that runs in English: "See Naples and die." As you approach Naples, Mount Vesuvius rises in the rear, and beyond it is the little town of Mori. The original saying is, "See Naples and then Mori." But as it happens that "mori" is also the imperative of the verb "morire"—"to die," a play upon the word gives the meaning, "See Naples and then die"—as if no place else worth seeing were left in all the wide world.

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DECEMBER 13.

Our first Sunday at sea, the third of Advent. We have passed from the region of snow and sleet, and the change is welcome. The morning breaks bright and clear, and as the day wears on it grows distinctly warmer. The sun shines out of a cloudless sky and the air is balmy as in a June day. While I write the thermometer out on the promenade deck shows 56 degrees in the shade. Frost and snow are things of the past—things of the land we have left behind.

Not having a portable altar, we are unable to say Mass. There are more than seven hundred persons in the steerage, mostly Italians seeking "la bella patria"—their own lovely homeland. I arrange with the captain to have a service for them at 3 p.m. The second-class saloon being too small, we hold the service under an awning on the deck. Dressed in cassock and with my rochet on—for the very first time—I kneel upon the main hatch and say aloud in Latin the Rosary and Litany of the Blessed Virgin, which they all answer in the same tongue. These people, I may remark by the way, are all taught from childhood to say those prayers in the language of the Church. Prayers over, I address them a few words in Italian, the season and the occasion furnishing a theme. Exiles are we from home, seeking a fatherland afar, and One has come down from that fatherland to raise us up and to lead us on. As we cross the sea of life, not always calm and untroubled as the one we sail to-day, we must pause from time to time to lift up our eyes and fix them on the eternal truths that shine like stars upon our pathway. We must prepare for the advent of the Sun of Justice, and from the lesser lights turn our gaze longingly to the bright morning Star that heralds His rising. Such is the sum of what I said, but I must own that it sounds much better in this English summary than it did in such poor Italian as I could muster.

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DECEMBER 14.

At noon the log reads:

Lat. Long. Weather Remarks 41.34 56.28 Fresh gale: W. SW. Dis. 317 SW. S. S. W., rough quarterly sea. Average Speed: 13.49

We have run into a storm, or it has run in upon us. "Fresh gale" means a wind blowing 50 or 60 miles an hour. But our ship is very steady. Still there is a good deal of motion—of that queer, all-round, uncertain, miserable motion so apt to induce sea-sickness. My companion, though he has been so seldom to sea, is a better sailor than I. As for me, I feel that I could very easily be quite sick if I wanted to. But I don't want to, and up to a certain point one can fight this sickness off. My chief occupation all day is fighting off seasickness. The wild winds, the wailing sea-waves, the reeling, staggering ship keep telling me it is of no use; that I had better crawl into my berth and give up the uneven struggle. But I hold out in spite of all of them. As I write this in the steamer's library at 6 p.m. the battle is still on and the issue somewhat doubtful.

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DECEMBER 15.

The battle is fought and won—thanks to the abating of the storm and a calmer sea. The weather to-day is fine and warm—58 degrees in the shade. It was 68 degrees yesterday, and the mugginess of the atmosphere made it unpleasant. For me, indeed, it is never too pleasant on board ship. I have an uneasy feeling that the most one can hope for is a truce, and that the battle with sea-sickness may have to be fought over again at any moment. Under such circumstances writing is not easy.

The sea, the deep mysterious sea, with its changeful, elusive hues and its passionate moods! The dominant mood, I fancy, is melancholy. The sea lifts up its voice only to weep, and every sea-sound dies away in a sob or a wail. When the crested waves break into foam, what are the spray drops but the tears of the salt sea? It not only yields a grave to the countless millions that are buried beneath its waters, but weeps for them ever, and chants over them an unending requiem. And its loneliness is beyond words. Mid-ocean seems the native home of solitude—a solitude that the passing ship leaves unbroken. What a tale this lonely, moaning sea could tell of the men who have sunk into its depths, "unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown!" But till it gives up its dead, that tale shall not be told.

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DECEMBER 16.

Late last evening I sat talking in the smoking-room with a Protestant gentleman from Minneapolis. Some years ago he visited the Holy Land, and I was interested in the account he gave of it. He does not seem to have been much impressed by the country itself or its sanctuaries. "The most beautiful sight I saw in the Holy Land," he declared with evident sincerity, "was the face of a nun." It was not the physical, but the spiritual beauty of the face that struck him and imprinted itself upon his memory. A beautiful soul beamed out from it—a soul made beautiful by close communion with God. "I will feed on God," says Alexandrine in A Sister's Story, not knowing very well at the moment what she means. But she did feed on God, and became beautiful as an angel, with that beauty which never can fade. If we would be truly beautiful let us feed on God the Uncreated Beauty, ever ancient and ever new.

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DECEMBER 17.

How shall we feed on God? First by prayer. Not as completely is the fish immersed in the sea or the bird in the air as the soul is in God, for He is everywhere, and "in Him we live, and move, and are." Every time we breathe we drink in the fresh air to renew the life of the body; every time we pray, if we pray aright, we draw down the grace of God to give new life to the soul. And as when a man ceases to breathe we know that the life is gone out of him, so when a man ceases to pray we may know that his soul is dead within him. But there is another, a more literal and yet more wondrous way of feeding on God, and that is Holy Communion. "I am the Bread of Life," and again, "He who eats Me shall also live by Me." "As the hare in winter," says St. Francis of Sales, "grows white by feeding on the snow, so the soul grows white by feeding on this Heavenly Manna." The science may be at fault, but the thought is true. "It is the boast of the Catholic Church," observes Cardinal Newman, "that she can keep the young heart chaste, because she gives Jesus for food and Mary for nursing-mother." I am quoting from memory, and do not vouch for the exact accuracy of the quotation.

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DECEMBER 18.

Last night we passed the first two of the Azores. These islands were discovered by Portuguese navigators about the middle of the fifteenth century, and still belong to Portugal. They number nine in all, and have a population of some 260,000. About noon we sight Pico, the third of the group, and steam by it for hours, at a distance of six or seven miles off. Though we have sunshine at sea, it is raining and misting ashore, and we fail to get a good view. However, I have counted as many as seven little villages where the snow-white cottages form into clusters on the sloping shore. These islands are of volcanic origin, and the conical peak of an extinct volcano seems to have given its name to the island we are passing by. It is visible for a moment or two, and we catch just a glimpse of it as it peeps out of a cloud. But it is a coy peak and hastes to hide itself beneath its veil of mist.

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DECEMBER 19.

I have learned that the mountain we passed yesterday rises to a height of 7,460 feet, and slopes to the sea at an angle of 40 degrees. The bare head of it, uplifted above its bed of cloud, and outlined against the blue sky, with the sun shining full upon it, is still vividly before my imagination. No human eye witnessed the volcanic upheavel which cast this mountain peak up into the clouds out of the bosom of the sea. But Captain Tillard of H.M.S. "Sabrina" was eye-witness, in 1811, of the rise and extinction of an island in the neighbourhood, which reached a height of 410 feet and was swallowed up by the sea after an existence of 119 days.

For more than a week we have held our lonely way on the ocean, no sail seen, no smoke of steamer on the far horizon. The sea gulls alone bear us company, whether the same birds that followed us from the first, or fresh relays from the pastures of the deep, no one can tell. Birds of ocean, foster-children of the wandering sea, their home is on the rolling wave, their haunts no man may know. But the same Providence that feeds the sparrows on the dry land gives food to these rovers on the wilderness of waters.

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DECEMBER 20.

Our second Sunday at sea. I say the Rosary and Litany in the second cabin, where there are a number of Italians. I also give a short instruction. A wee mite of a boy, with the coal black hair and dark complexion of the South, keeps eyeing me curiously the while, as if wondering how one who looks so little like a countryman can speak the language.

Ever since we got fairly away from the American coast we have had summer weather, the thermometer ranging from 50 to 70 degrees. The temperature of the water has been even higher. One day it was 72 degrees; this morning it was 62. The Gulf Stream is here at its widest. Only the short day can bring home to us the fact that we are at the winter solstice.

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DECEMBER 21.

To-day the larger gulls that haunt the seashore and nest in the rocks are abroad. They are tokens that the land is not very far away. Sometime to-night we reach Gibraltar, but must lie outside till morning, for no ship can enter the port of that grim fortress save in the day.

Now that our ocean voyage is nearing its end, our thoughts turn back to the loved ones we have left behind. The uppermost feeling in my own mind at the moment is gratitude, first to God for all His goodness, and next to the many friends, whether personally known to me or not, who have so generously given of their means and freed my mind from all anxiety on that score. I feel that I owe them more than can be put in words. May the peace of God and His blessing abide with them always, and may He, in His own way and in His own good time, repay them a hundredfold.

This batch of notes was mailed at Gibraltar.

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