The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-05-21
William Allen White in the Emporis
 Ga zAftA

William Allen White in the Emporia
 Gazette.
 N WO hundred people. mostly Amer k0 jeans. living two weeks together,
 whether by land or by sea, with ing space something less than an Elm poria block, will get fairly well aoouaint- ed. It may be different with Englishmen or Russians, or spaniards or Italians, who have caste differences to maintain, but Americans being herded for two weeks in the frst-elass quarters of ship always make up.' So the two weeks voyage to Naples, by way of the Azores and Madeira, developed great American family. We all but dressed by the common baseburner in the living room. For the people on each deck got so used to scooting by one another in the halls nights and evenings in their pa 1amas, nighties and knnonos that at the last we quit turning our heads from one another and pretending not to see persons of another set in their night clothes and the girl from Kankakee, who wore a gor- geous red Japanese kimono, brought her. self to smile rather pleasantly on the
 
 paJamas as they passed on their morning journey to the sea water baths. The radiant matron in her late fifties was the beauty of the boat
 The men in the smoking room got better acquainted than the women in the read ing room But both men and women met and got acquainted in the dining room. The men play @ little poker and little whist and talk a great deal. The poKer stakes were never large on our boat and man could play all day for $1. But mostly the men talk. And so it turns out that this is small world. For when American men talk they tell all about themselves. A state senator named Thompson, from Connecticut, asked about Major Hood, and one word leading to an- other, 1t transpired that he lent Almerin Gillett some money to build Red Rocks selling the mortgage to E. P. Bowdeck, who afterward foreclosed the mortgage and sold the property to its present own ers Also William Savage and MT. Rob bins of Michigan were on the boat and they were friends of Mrs. I, E. Lambert
 The girl from Kankakee Is regular
 
 boat everyone began before the end of the first week to establish relations with one another based on mutual friends, for mer meetings or common interests.
 Two celebrities were on our ship, Rose Stahl of 'The Chorus Lady and Justus Miles Foreman the author. Miss Stahl didn't mingle with the people. She seemed tired and sat in her chair on the upper deck and none of The women knew what kind of underwear she was wearing-as they did about all of the rest of the ship. MT. Foreman became one of the great plain people. He mixed and put on his evening clothes at the dances and did his full duty as scholar and gentleman should. It will interest the younger set, which reads the newest and smartest books, to know that MT. Foreman is somewhere nearly 30 years old, slender, handsome simple and well hammered. He Is of distinctly English cut of mind and of an English speech. He writes beautiful stories about beautiful people, who do beautiful things in a beaut. way: and he looks like his own heroes He seemed greatly interested in the doing of the common folk of our great middle west, and perhaps did not realize that among them are his readers. For litera- ture without the middle west would wither and langufsh in America The books and magazines of this country have their largest sale out here among the sunfiowers. where. the people speak with flat "a's' and have money to lend on farm mortgages!
 It is remarkable how quick two weeks