A Trip Around the World, 1910-1911

A TRIP AROUND THE WORLD August 15, 1910--March 7, 1911 By Clarence Poe.

WANDERLUST.

The highways and the byways, the kind sky folding all, And never a care to drag me back and never a voice to call; Only the call of the long white road to the far horizon's wall.

The glad seas and the mad seas, the seas on a night of June, And never a hand to beckon back from the path of the new-lit moon; Never a night that lasts too long or a sawn that breaks too soon!

The shrill breeze and the hill breeze, and the sea breeze fierce and bold, And never a breeze that gives the lie to the tale that a breeze has told; Always the tale of the strange and new in countries strange and old.

The lone trail and the known trail, the trail you must take on trust, And never a trail without a grave where a wanderer's bones are thrust-- Never a look or a turning back will the dust shall claim the dust.

--Isabel Mackay, in American Magazine.

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August 15th.

Left office with Mr. Pearson, Mr. Marshall and $2,202.15. Mr. Bailey came down to depot with good wishes and a good luck pin and at high noon I bade my friends good-bye and started on my tour over the world. I also bade good-bye to the Raleigh of my twenties for when I see it again I shall be 30 years old. At the station I weighed 128 pounds. With Mr. & Mrs. Will Royall on train.

August 16th.

Awoke in Jersey City at 7:00 and after taking ferry to New York went to Cook's office at 9:00 a.m. and went over my proposed tour with Mr. Hellfeld. A very nice man, but gave me a suggestion of his first syllable when he told me that he feared that he would not be able to get me a berth on the Pacific Mail "Korea", sailing from San Francisco, August 30th, although I wrote them last week to engage passage. It seems my letter was delayed. Went back at 3:00 but still no word from the steamship company. Five p.m., ditto. If I can't get on the Pacific Mail, however, I'll go to Yellowstone Park and see something of Montana and Washington (and possibly Canada) sailing on the Japanese line from Seattle, September 6th. This will largely compensate for any disappointment in getting on the finer Pacific Mail, so there is still--as Mark Tapley would say-- "no credit in being jolly." Went tonight to see Marie Dressler in "Tilda's Nightmare", a rattling good comedy with fine ballet.

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August 17th.

After play last night went to Judson Hotel, and being unable to get a good room, took a delightfully neat little cubby hole rather than go out on a midnight hunt for another place, and slept like a top on the cot provided. Slept too late to go to Cook's at 9:00 as promised, but no matter, for when I did get there, no word from the Pacific Mail. At noon, same thing. 1 p.m., same thing some more; but rather than risk going on an uncertainty, I decided to stay for a definite answer, which I got about 4:45, proceeding to pay $905.68 for my ticket "over the world and under the world and back again to you," and got $970 worth of Cook's traveler's checks, and hiked out at 5:30 to catch the 6:00 train for Chicago. Found my baggage and got it checked and just as the conductor called "all aboard" I got on. Was much impressed in Metropolitan Museum today by Loeb's striking picture "The Temple of the Winds" with its suggestion of sweep and illimitableness, Sorolla's new paintings, Macmonnies' "Horse Tamers" (sculpture) and another piece of recent American sculpture "The Despotic Age" in which a sternfaced, materialistic victor, his brow wreathed in laurel, drives a garland-bedecked chariot dragged by four men harddriven by a heartless driver, one of the men pathetic in his age; and in the rear of the chariot two sorrowful women bound.

What a picture of many a modern "captain of industry"!