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my remark that it was so good to meet someone who had enthusiasm and expressed it, she said, "Lots of others have it too, just as much, but simply can't express it, aren't made that way." And lastly, there was a remark I'd overheard her make on deck one day, which was somewhat connected with this same idea--"It's going to be just too bad for the man I marry because when I love anyone, I let them know it."

Around 1 a.m. I saw our Presque Isle light flashing way off in the faint mist on the southern horizon. And yet Erie seemed so remote--in another world surely not part of the one we were living in at that moment. Nevertheless, I knew the party was about over. In fact, that was the way it ended except for a brief goodbye on the dock at Buffalo the next morning. I shook her small hand with its warm, strong grip and wished her luck. I have no recollection of what her face looked like but she was indeed quite a girl. She must have been at least ten years younger than I which would put her around sixty now. I wonder how her life turned out. I wonder whether, like most people, she has had her tragedy and disappointments in spite of her determination to LIVE, on top of the world to eighty and beyond. I never ^[[saw]] or heard of her again.

As I looked back on the trip, I had a feeling of deep appreciation for an experience with a fine crowd of people, a slice of life that had been wholly sharp and clean and far removed from the shady atmosphere I sometimes met in business and everyday affairs. I thought of the great clear stretches of sky and water blazing in a glorious sunlight that burned health and vitality into one's body. I had felt free, gloriously free, and everything had been mighty good. I remembered the long, green shorelines, sometimes virgin forest, darkly beautiful, and the vast sweep of the sea in all directions to the far off horizons. And I would recall the white gulls soaring in the blue sky above the ship, the cool, refreshing breeze, the summer stars and the lovely moon making a silver highway over the rippling water, the clean, straight shafts of the lighthouse on their lonely capes and reefs, the streams of shipping, and sometimes the towers of a great city rising at the end of a long sail. But most of all, I'd appreciated the experience of healthy living, clean and fine, of having our children with us and showing them their first view of an expanded world, of meeting congenial people in a spot that was far removed from the worries and hubbub of our everyday lives. And for me, at least, there was the pleasure of making friends with the unique young woman who taught me and a lot of others, by example, how to get more out of life. That summer I'm sure we visited the Peninsula beaches many times and I can still remember that occasionally I'd look north over the waters of the lake and reflect that out there along that horizon sailed the SOUTH AMERICAN with us aboard, living briefly in a wholly different world. We would take the SOUTH AMERICAN again some day but it wouldn't be quite the same the second time.