Excerpt from Only Glimpses Bon voyage! Bon voyage! The happy, good wish came from many lips as the steamer Noordland slowly left the dock, and with seeming reluctance turned her bows seaward. What a rush to gain a point of advantage, to see the last fading lines of the native shore! The beauty of our little band, generally bright and joyous, looked shoreward over the widening deep, with smiles and tears. "You have seen Sunshine and rain at once; her smiles and tears Were like a better day; those happy smilets, That played on her ripe lips, seemed not to know What guests were in her eyes." Scott's sentiment, "This is my own, my native land," finds an echo in every heart, when one is about to place the stormy ocean between home and herself. We were, however, a merry company, full of happy anticipations to be realized in "la belle France et la belle Italic aussi." A golden land of promise was before us and, with brave hearts, we began our "watery waiting." About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.