By an arrangement with the Geographical
Society of America, acting in conjunction with the Royal Geographical
Society of England (to both of whom I communicated my proposal),
I went at my own expense.
It is scarcely feasible to give here full details in regard to my
outfit and equipment, though I hope to do so in a later and more
extended account of my expedition. Suffice it to say that my outfit,
which was modelled on the equipment of English lecturers in America,
included a complete suit of clothes, a dress shirt for lecturing
in, a fountain pen and a silk hat. The dress shirt, I may say for
the benefit of other travellers, proved invaluable. The silk hat,
however, is no longer used in England except perhaps for scrambling
eggs in.
I pass over the details of my pleasant voyage from New York to
Liverpool. During the last fifty years so many travellers have made
the voyage across the Atlantic that it is now impossible to obtain
any impressions from the ocean of the slightest commercial value. My
readers will recall the fact that Washington Irving, as far back as a
century ago, chronicled the pleasure that one felt during an Atlantic
voyage in idle day dreams while lying prone upon the bowsprit and
watching the dolphins leaping in the crystalline foam. Since his
time so many gifted writers have attempted to do the same thing that
on the large Atlantic liners the bowsprit has been removed, or at any
rate a notice put up: "Authors are requested not to lie prostrate on
the bowsprit.
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