It is only fair to say, however, that toward the end of my long and
interesting illness I had quite broken his spirit and brought him to
be as attentive as even I could wish. By the time I was able with his
assistance to go upon deck again he was bringing me nutritive wines
and jellies without being told, and so attentive did he remain that
I overheard a fellow-passenger address him as Florence Nightingale.
I also overheard the Senator tell him that I had got his sheep,
whatever that may have meant--a sheep or a goat--some domestic animal.
Yet with all his willingness he was clumsy in his handling of me; he
seemed to take nothing with any proper seriousness, and in spite of my
sharpest warning he would never wear the proper clothes, so that I
always felt he was attracting undue attention to us. Indeed, I should
hardly care to cross with him again, and this I told him straight.
Of the so-called joys of ship-life, concerning which the boat
companies speak so enthusiastically in their folders, the less said
the better. It is a childish mind, I think, that can be impressed by
the mere wabbly bulk of water. It is undoubtedly tremendous, but
nothing to kick up such a row about. The truth is that the prospect
from a ship's deck lacks that variety which one may enjoy from almost
any English hillside.
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