Whatever the effect of "Ship-Bored" upon others, its publication has exerted a very definite effect upon me, or rather upon the character of my daily mail. Instead of letters the postman now leaves little packages containing pills which, according to the senders, will prevent the casting of bread upon the waters.

It is astonishing to learn how many sea-sick remedies there are. Looking at the bottles and the boxes piled, each morning by my breakfast plate, I sometimes wonder if there aren't as many remedies as sufferers.

But suppose there are? Why do people send the medicines to me? Why do perfect strangers assume that, because I have taken up the task of muck-raking the Atlantic Ocean, I am in need of antidotes for mal de mer? Even suppose that I do suffer thus at sea? Is it anybody else's business—or luncheon?

All great literary works are born of suffering. Stop the suffering and you stop the author. Yet people keep on sending pills to me—each pill an added insult if you choose to take it that way.

But I don't take them that way. I don't take them at all. I try them on my friends. When a friend of mine is sailing I send him a few pills out of a recent bottle. If he reports that he was sea-sick I throw away the balance of the bottle. The same if he dies. That shows that the pills are too strong.

I do not wish to take undue credit to myself for conducting these experiments. Since the pills are given to me, my researches cost me nothing—excepting an occasional friend whom (as he was sailing for Europe, anyway) I should not be able to see, even if he were alive.

J. S.

New York, January, 1912.