So I guess Florence had not found getting married to me
a very stimulating process. I had not found anything much more
inspiring to say than how glad I was, with variations. I think I was
too dazed. Well, the Hurlbirds were too dazed to say much. We
had breakfast together, and then Florence went to pack her grips
and things. Old Hurlbird took the opportunity to read me a
full-blooded lecture, in the style of an American oration, as to the
perils for young American girlhood lurking in the European
jungle. He said that Paris was full of snakes in the grass, of which
he had had bitter experience. He concluded, as they always do,
poor, dear old things, with the aspiration that all American women
should one day be sexless--though that is not the way they put it. .
. .
Well, we made the ship all right by one-thirty--an there was a
tempest blowing. That helped Florence a good deal. For we were
not ten minutes out from Sandy Hook before Florence went down
into her cabin and her heart took her. An agitated stewardess came
running up to me, and I went running down. I got my directions
how to behave to my wife. Most of them came from her, though it
was the ship doctor who discreetly suggested to me that I had
better refrain from manifestations of affection.
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