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14

I believe the children were having quite an adventure on this trip. Rog had finally overcome his dread of the whistle and anyhow it had been mainly the dense traffic in the Detroit River that had caused this trouble. There were three items that Willie had reminded me of which should be mentioned however:

1) It had been only a short time before this trip that Rog had had his tonsils removed and he had taken a great antipathy to the odor of ether. Our staterooms had no toilets in them-- merely washbasins-- so we had to visit the public toilets which were located along the corridors They had them deodorized with something that had an odor very much like ether. Therefore, when Rog went into one, he held his nose until he got out -- in fact, he held his nose even when he [[underlined]]passed[[/underlined]] the door of one of them and Willie, particularly, was embarrassed by this if other passengers were in the vicinity.

2) Prior to the trip, Rog had been trouble by what they delicately refer to on TV nowadays as "irregularity," so we had brought along a "pottie" which he could use in the stateroom, where it was more practical to sit for a while than in the johns, particularly, as it developed, when the johns were tainted with the hated odor of ether. This sometimes required extended stateroom seances with either Willie or me in attendance, but probably Willie more often because I'm sure she took the brunt of the care of the children most of the time.

3) This next incident, I thought happened to Rog but Willie is sure it was Bab. Whenever I've recalled it over these many years, I've shuddered. We were going up to the sundeck and had to traverse the boatdeck to get there. The rails on the boatdeck were arranged so it was possible for a child to squeeze between the end of a rail and a lifeboat and walk out onto a portion of the deck where there was no rail at all -- it simple dropped off to the water maybe 30-feet below. On this occasion, Bab apparently ran on ahead of us and when we reached the boatdeck, she had done just this and was standing just a few feet away from the unprotected edge! Fortunately, although the ship was in motion, it was a calm sea and there was no motion to speak of to make her lose her balance. But she might have fallen overboard. Looking back on it now, I feel a little better to know it was Bab instead of Rog because she was nearly eight versus his four years, and she undoubtedly had a better appreciation of what she was doing and the danger involved than he would have had. But we were shaken up very badly by this incident-- in fact, as I say, I still shudder when I think of it.