The weather moderated at the end of forty-eight hours, and though the waves still wore their night-caps and were too playful to go to bed, they occasioned us but little annoyance and we bowled along over the Atlantic in merry fashion, killing time by spinning yarns, playing poker and taking a turn at the roulette wheel which Fred Carroll had purchased at Nice to remind him of his experience at Monte Carlo.
At a very early hour on Saturday morning, April 6, we were off Fire Island, and sunrise found us opposite quarantine.
Our base-ball friends in New York, who had been looking for us for three days, had been early apprised that the "Adriatic" had arrived off Sandy Hook, and, boarding the little steamer "Starin" and the tug "George Wood," they came down the bay, two hundred strong, to meet us.

With the aid of "a leedle Sherman pand," steam whistles and lusty throats they made noise enough to bring us all on deck in a hurry.

As the distance between the vessels grew shorter we could distinguish among others the faces of Marcus Meyer, W.W.Kelly, John W.Russel, Digby Bell, DeWolf Hopper, Col.

W.T.Coleman and many others, not least among them being my old father, who had come on from Marshalltown to be among the first to welcome myself and my wife back to America, and who, as soon as the "Starin" was made fast, climbed on deck and gave us both a hug that would have done credit to the muscular energy of a grizzly bear, but who was no happier to see us than we were to see him and to learn that all was well with our dear ones.

I'm not sure but the next thing that he did was to propose a game of poker to some of the boys, but if he did not it was simply because there was too much excitement going on.