During August, 1891, I was busy getting ready for my voyage, as I was to sail on the Ems on August 23.  Although I had crossed the ocean six times in the prior ten years I dreaded the voyage more than words can describe.  The last days were filled with sadness, in parting with those so dear to me in foreign countries—­especially those curly-headed little girls, so bright, so pretty, so winning in all their ways.  Hattie and Theodore went with me from Southampton in the little tug to the great ship Ems.  It was very hard for us to say the last farewell, but we all tried to be as brave as possible.

We had a rough voyage, but I was not seasick one moment.  I was up and dressed early in the morning, and on deck whenever the weather permitted.  I made many pleasant acquaintances with whom I played chess and whist; wrote letters to all my foreign friends, ready to mail on landing; read the “Egotist,” by George Meredith, and Ibsen’s plays as translated by my friend Frances Lord.  I had my own private stewardess, a nice German woman who could speak English.  She gave me most of my meals on deck or in the ladies’ saloon, and at night she would open the porthole two or three times and air our stateroom; that made the nights endurable.  The last evening before landing we got up an entertainment with songs, recitations, readings, and speeches.  I was invited to preside and introduce the various performers.  We reached Sandy Hook the evening of the 29th day of August and lay there all night, and the next morning we sailed up our beautiful harbor, brilliant with the rays of the rising sun.

Being fortunate in having children in both hemispheres, here, too, I found a son and daughter waiting to welcome me to my native land.  Our chief business for many weeks was searching for an inviting apartment where my daughter, Mrs. Stanton Lawrence, my youngest son, Bob, and I could set up our family altar and sing our new psalm of life together.  After much weary searching we found an apartment.  Having always lived in a large house in the country, the quarters seemed rather contracted at first, but I soon realized the immense saving in labor and expense in having no more room than is absolutely necessary, and all on one floor.  To be transported from the street to your apartment in an elevator in half a minute, to have all your food and fuel sent to your kitchen by an elevator in the rear, to have your rooms all warmed with no effort of your own, seemed like a realization of some fairy dream.  With an extensive outlook of the heavens above, of the Park and the Boulevard beneath, I had a feeling of freedom, and with a short flight of stairs to the roof (an easy escape in case of fire), of safety, too.