The sea without you is not the sea, any more than heaven would be heaven were you not there.
"I cannot describe to you, my dear lady, how detestable the life on board is to me.

I loathe the people with their inane chatter, and the idiotic children, and the highly-correct and gentlemanly captain, all equally.

The philistine father, the sea-sick mother, the highly-cultured daughter, and the pipe-smoking son, are equally objects of disgust.

When I go on deck the little children make a circle round me, because I am so big, and the sailors will not let me go on to forecastle under three shillings--which I paid cheerfully, however, because I can be alone there and think of you, without being contemplated as an object of wonder by about two hundred idiots.

I have managed to rig a sort of table in my cabin at last, and here I sit, under the dubious light of the port-hole, wishing it would blow, or that we might meet an iceberg, or anything, to scare the people into their dens and leave me a little open-air solitude.
"It seems so strange to be writing to you.