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April [[strikethrough]] 17 - 18 [[/strikethrough]] ^[[16 - 17]]

We crossed the Equator at noon on Sunday the 1^[[6]]th, but no notice was taken of it until the next afternoon, when King Neptune belatedly boarded the ship, and treated the neophytes with appropriate roughness.  I have never seen such a mess as the first-crossers were dunked in.  A board table near the swimming pool was smeared with spaghetti, soap suds, catsup and raw eggs, and the men were all rolledthoroughly in that, while chunks of ice and more of the ice-cold spaghetti [[strikethrough]] was [[/striekthrough]] were shoved inside their bathing trunks.  Balloons full of ice water were burst over their heads, and generous lathers of egg and soap smeared in their hair and all over their faces, while worcestershire and catsup were poured down their throats.  They treated the girls a little more gently, but all of them were put through the initiation blindfolded, and then led to the edge of the pool, and pushed in.

The weather has been hot and steamy, but the sea beautiful and blue.  There is plenty of entertainment, movies, and dancing, and on two evenings there has been a splendid floor show put on by a group of professionals ontheir way to a night club in Rio.

The men take care of the animals. Frances and I are studying Spanish (she much harder than I am). I go to church every morning, walk five miles a day, read a couple of hours, study Spanish an hour.  There are lots of cocktail parties, and the swimming crowd, from which I am still barred because of my rotten cold, have luncheon on deck every day.

There has never been so interesting a passenger list on any ship that I have traveled on before.  Heading the list are Ambassador Caffery and his wife on their way to Rio, very dignified, not mixing much with anybody else, but pleasant enough when Bill barges in on them and insists on buying them a drink.  Patricia "Honeychile" Wilder, a Hollywood starlet, is traveling with Randy Dow, a pretty Virginia girl, and her (Pat's) fiance, a welthy Argentine horce-racer.  Young Terry Burke, an insurance agent, made a pass at Pat one night, and the Argentine blacked both his eyes for him.  Mrs. David Kamensten, said to be a vaudeville actress, wears the longest finger nails and eye-lashes I have ever seen on a human being.  Mr. and Mrs. McClellan giggle and blush every time the orchestra plays "Here Comes the Bride."  Dr. Boys and Mr. Cooper, both of Kalamazoo, are in Siemel's party and are hoping to shoot jaguars in Matto Grosso.  Jo Stolfi is a fat New York policeman who is going to Buenos Aires to bring back a "moiderer" and all ws as how he might as well have a good time now, because on the way back he'll be too busy watching his prisoner.  Father Powers, the priest, has been in China for six years, where he "had a little trouble with bandits," and when he got out of the hospital was sent back to the States for a year's leave from foreign service.  He has an Irish brogue and a grand sense of humor.