While he was talking I saw Cousin Willie slip one of the pieces of money out of the pile into his pocket:  at least I think I saw it; but he did it so quickly that I was not sure, and didn’t like to say anything.

Then a bell rang and we went to eat in a big saloon, all crowded with common people, and very stuffy.  The food was wretched, and I could not eat.  I suppose Uncle was famished from the long waiting and the bad food in the emigrant shed.  It was dreadful to see the hungry way that he ate the greasy stew they gave us, with his head down almost in his plate and his moustache all unkempt.  “This ragout is admirable,” he said.  “Let the chef be informed that I said it.”

Cousin Ferdinand didn’t sit with us.  He sat beside his two new friends and they had their heads all close together and talked with great excitement.  I never knew before that Cousin Ferdinand talked Yiddish.  I remember him at Sofia, on horseback addressing his army, and I don’t think he talked to his troops in Yiddish.  He was telling them, I remember, how sorry he was that he couldn’t accompany them to the front.  But for “business in Sofia,” he said, he would like to be in the very front trenches, the foremost of all.  It was thought very brave of him.

When we got up from supper, the ship was heaving and rolling quite a bit.  A young man, a steward, told us that we were now out of the harbor and in the open sea.  Uncle William told him to convey his compliments to the captain on his proper navigation of the channel.  The young man looked very closely at Uncle and said, “Sure, I’ll tell him right away,” but he said it kindly.  Then he said to me, when Uncle couldn’t hear, “Your pa ain’t quite right, is he, Miss Hohen?” I didn’t know what he meant, but, of course, I said that Uncle William was only my uncle.  Hohen is, I should explain, the name by which we are known now.  The young man said that he wasn’t really a steward, only just for the trip.  He said that, because I had a strange feeling that I had met him before, and asked him if I hadn’t seen him at one of the courts.  But he said he had never been “up before one” in his life.  He said he lives in New York, and drives an ice-wagon and is an ice-man.  He said he was glad to have the pleasure of our acquaintance.  He is, I think, the first ice-man I have ever met.  He reminds me very much of the Romanoffs, the Grand Dukes of the younger branch, I mean.  But he says he is not connected with them, so far as he knows.  He said his name is Peters.  We have no Almanach de Gotha here on board the steamer, so I cannot look up his name.

S.S.  America.  Thursday

We had a dreadful experience last night.  In the middle of the night Uncle Henry came and called me and said that Uncle William was ill.  So I put on an old shawl and went with him.  The ship was pitching and heaving with a dreadful straining and creaking noise.  A dim light burned in the cabin, and outside there was a great roaring of the wind and the wild sound of the sea surging against the ship.