The Liberty--or, as the secretarial staff, for reasons which will become
apparent later, called her, the Liberty, Ha! Ha!--was designed and built
on the Clyde. I have never seen a vessel of more beautiful lines.
Sailors would find, I think, but one fault in her appearance and one
peculiarity. With a white-painted hull, her bridge and the whole of her
upper structure, except the masts and funnel, were also white, giving to
her general features a certain flatness which masked her fine
proportions. Her bridge, instead of being well forward, was placed so
far aft that it was only a few feet from the funnel. The object of this
departure from custom was to prevent any walking over Mr. Pulitzer's
head when he sat in his library, which was situated under the spot,
where the bridge would have been in most vessels.
The boat was specially designed to meet Mr. Pulitzer's peculiar
requirements. She had a flush deck from the bows to the stern, broken
only, for perhaps twenty feet, by a well between the forecastle head and
the fore part of the bridge.
Running aft from the bridge to within forty feet of the stern was an
unbroken line of deck houses. Immediately afore the bridge was Mr.
Pulitzer's library, a handsome room lined from floor to ceiling with
books; abaft of that was the dining saloon, which could accommodate in
comfort a dozen people; continuing aft there were, on the port side, the
pantry, amidships the enclosed space over the engine room, and on the
starboard side a long passage leading to the drawing-room and writing-
room used by the secretaries and by members of Mr.
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