In my youth, it was still an event to cross.I remember my first voyage on the old side-wheeled SCOTIA, and Captain Judkins in a wheeled chair, and a perpetual bad temper, being pushed about the deck; and our delight, when the inevitable female asking him (three days out) how far we were from land, got the answer "about a mile!""Indeed! How interesting! In which direction?""In that direction, madam," shouted the captain, pointing downward as he turned his back to her.
If I remember, we were then thirteen days getting to Liverpool, and made the acquaintance on board of the people with whom we travelled during most of that winter.Imagine anyone now making an acquaintance on board a steamer! In those simple days people depended on the friendships made at summer hotels or boarding-houses for their visiting list.At present, when a girl comes out, her mother presents her to everybody she will be likely to know if she were to live a century.In the seventies, ladies cheerfully shared their state-rooms with women they did not know, and often became friends in consequence; but now, unless a certain deck-suite can be secured, with bath and sitting-room, on one or two particular "steamers," the great lady is in despair.Yet our mothers were quite as refined as the present generation, only they took life simply, as they found it.
Children are now taken abroad so young, that before they have reached an age to appreciate what they see, Europe has become to them a twice-told tale.So true is this, that a receipt for making children good Americans is to bring them up abroad.Once they get back here it is hard to entice them away again.