A Traveller at Forty Author:Theodore Dreiser Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III AT FISHGUARD WHILE I was lying in my berth the fifth morning, I heard the room steward outside my door tell some one that he thought we reached... more » Fishguard at one-thirty. I packed my trunks, thinking of this big ship and the fact that my trip was over and that never again could I cross the Atlantic for the first time. A queer world this. We can only do any one thing significantly once. I remember when I first went to Chicago, I remember when I first went to St. Louis, I remember when I first went to New York. Other trips there were, but they are lost in vagueness. But the first time of any important thing sticks and lasts; it comes back at times and haunts you with its beauty and its sadness. You know so well you cannot do that any more; and, like a clock, it ticks and tells you that life is moving on. I shall never come to England any more for the first time. That is gone and done for — worse luck. So I packed — will you believe it ? — a little sadly. I think most of us are a little silly at times, only we are cautious enough to conceal it. There is in me the spirit of a lonely child somewhere and it clings pitifully to the hand of its big mama, Life, and cries when it is frightened; and then there is a coarse, vulgar exterior which fronts the world defiantly and bids all and sundry to go to the devil. It sneers and barks and jeers bitterly at times, and guffaws and cackles and has a joyous time laughing at the follies of others. Then I went to hunt Barfleur to find out how I shoulddo. How much was I to give the deck-steward; how much to the bath-steward; how much to the room- steward ; how much to the dining-room steward; how much to " boots," and so on. " Look here! " observed that most efficient of all managerial souls that I have ever known. " I 'l...« less