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another control, and after a second or two his own voice came from the machine. "Okay, Mr. Bush, tell us about it if you will. Though you must be tired of telling it.
    "Well, I used to be, but it's been quite a while since I've told it. This voice was deep, measured, assured; did not sound old. "When I was a kid in grade school and told this, I got hooted and jeered at, naturally, boys being the sensitive considerate creatures they are. Which I didn't mind; I hooted right back, my insults often superior to theirs. And it was somewhat the same in college. Mostly people assumed I'd made this up, but at least I got credit for being mildly imaginative and entertaining, a clever fellow. But always some people listened thoughtfully. And a few were impressed. When one of these was a girl, I sometimes found that her interest and attention transferred to me, and I'm afraid I sometimes used my story for the wrong reasons, though I feel no shame. But after I began practicing law in New York, and particularly when I understood the solid possibility that I might someday become a partner of the firm in which eventually I did just that, I stopped telling this story. It was harmful now, made me seem odd and eccentric. So I shut up about it, except very occasionally to someone I knew would be interested and could be trusted. Doesn't matter now, of course. I'm retired. Old.
    "Oh, I don't think-"
    "None of that. And if you dare even pronounce the term senior citizen,' I'll demonstrate that I'm capable of throwing you into this pool. Headfirst. And hold you under. I am old. I xvas horn near the turn of the century, so I've never had any trouble remembering mv age.
    "Anyway, when I was a boy we lived in New York. On Madison Avenue. We hadl a house-long gone-a four-story brownstone.
    My father, mother, two sisters, and me. And a dog actually named Fido. Plus several servants; my father was a successful marine- insurance broker, and we were well-off. Every morning our whole family breakfasted together, by paternal fiat, in the dining room. And one spring morning, a Wednesday, I remember, my father asked me whether I'd like to skip school that day. Well, I was twelve years old, and I acknowledged that just possibly I might; but why? Well, there was a ship coming in, he said, a liner, and it had occurred to him that I might like to see her come in, from his office. He knew very well I would. I was wild about the big liners in the same way, I suppose, that my grand- and great-grandchildren are about planes today. Although come to think of it, I don't believe they really are. They seem to take everything in stride, pretty hard to impress. They know more than I did when I was twenty years old. And some things, I'm sure, that I don't know yet.
    "But I loved the big liners. Thought about them, read about them, looked at their pictures and drew my own. And would have given anything I had or ever would have to sail on one. As we all did four or five years later. To Europe on the Leviathan. That was the old Vaterland, as you know. You do know, of course?
    "Sure, who doesn't?
    The old man laughed. "In the years since, I've sailed on the Mauretania. More than once. The old Mauretania, of course. And the Normandie, the Lauren tic, the Isle de France, God bless her, and the Queen Mary many times. Wonderful ship, the Mary, one of the great ones. Compares with even the Mauretania, and I don't like it that she's tied up and engineless in southern California, where she doesn't belong and never did. I suppose we should be grateful, though, that she still exists. None of the others do. All scrapped the moment their profitable days were done. Suppose we'd saved them? Had them all lined up in Southampton from the Kaiser Wilhelm on, say, right on through to the Mary. Be wonderful, wouldn't it? Then someday finally we'd add the newest and last, the Queen Elizabeth, Second: the QE Two. Which I'm happy to say is fully in the grand tradition. Modern, yes. As she should be.