s and continued the work of translation. When in London he occupied
rooms at the St. James's Hotel (now the Berkeley) in Piccadilly. He used
to say that the St. James's Hotel was the best place in the world in
which to do literary work, and that the finest place in the whole world
was the corner of Piccadilly. Still, he spent most of his time, as
usual, at the Athenaeum. Mr. H. R. Tedder, the Secretary, and an
intimate friend of Burton's, tells me that "He would work at the round
table in the library for hours and hours--with nothing for refreshment
except a cup of coffee and a box of snuff, which always stood at his
side;" and that he was rarely without a heavy stick with a whistle at
one end and a spike at the other--the spike being to keep away dogs
when he was travelling in hot countries. This was one of the many little
inventions of his own. Mr. Tedder describes him as a man of great and
subtle intellect and very urbane. "He had an athletic appearance and
a military carriage, and yet more the look of a literary man than of
a soldier." In summer as usual he wore white clothes, the shabby old
beaver, and the tie-pin shaped like a sword. Mr. Tedder summed him up as
"as a compound of a Benedictine monk, a Crusader and a Buccaneer."

The Hon. Henry J. Coke, looking in at the Athenaeum library one day,
and noticing the "white trousers, white linen coat and a very shabby
old white beaver hat," exclaimed, "Hullo Burton, do you find it so very
hot?"

"I don't want," said Burton, "to be mistaken for anyone else."

"There's not much fear of that, without your clothes," followed Coke.
[424]

During this holiday Burton visited most of his old friends, and often
ran down to Norwood to see his sister and her daughter, while everyone
remarked his brightness and buoyancy. "It was delightful," says Miss
Stisted, "to see how happy he was over the success of his venture."
He had already resolved to issue six additional volumes, to be called
Supplemental Nights. He would then take sixteen thousand pounds. He
calculated printing and sundries as costing four thousand, and that the
remainder would be net profit. As a matter of fact the expenses arose to
L6,000, making the net profit L10,000 [425] Burton had wooed fortune in
many ways, by hard study in India, by pioneering in Africa, by diplomacy
at Court, by gold-searching in Midian and at Axim, by patent medicining.
Finally he had found it in his inkstand; but as his favourite Jami
s