RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
to stop at twenty-odd different towns and attend innumerable meetings, banquetes and bailes. But, as it was, they gave us little trouble. Mrs. Moses' little daughter, who had just come out from San Francisco, my daughter Helen and my son Robert, Mr. Fergusson's son Arthur and young Jack Branagan, were all about the same age, and they never tired of devising games that could be played around such parts of the decks as were not infested with grown-ups. Then, to while away the hours when their elders were attending ceremonies on shore, they explored bays and rivers in a sailboat which was rigged out for them by Captain Lyman, of the Sumner, a most fatherly man who seemed to enjoy this unusual opportunity to indulge his love for children. On the beaches they collected an infinite variety of shells, corals and malodorous marine curiosities, but these they kept on the lower decks where they could enjoy them in peace. Charlie was, of course, the ship's baby. He was younger than either of the Worcester children and, I am afraid, somewhat less well behaved. He scorned their rather quiet amusements and led a strenuous and independent existence which gave me some uneasiness. He rushed around over the ship with the utmost carelessness, delivering orders in a strange jargon to his little Filipino nurse, who was always rushing after him just far enough behind to be utterly useless in case anything should happen to him. It was a certainty that should he fall overboard she would reach the rail just in time to see him sink. Some of the deck rails were low, but strange to say he came through without accident. I think Charlie must have acquired some of the surefootedness of a cat. He had been twice around the world before he was eight years old, and that he managed to grow up into an unscarred and quite decorous young man was certainly not due to natural caution on his part nor to over-restraint on ours.
It was an interesting party gathered on the Sumner.
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