y hotel to eat six
different fresh chutnies with one curry.

* * * * *

I want to go Home! I want to go back to India! I am miserable. The
steamship _Nawab_ at this time of the year ought to have been empty,
instead of which we have one hundred first-class passengers and
sixty-six second. All the pretty girls are in the latter class.
Something must have happened at Colombo--two steamers must have clashed.
We have the results of the collision, and we are a menagerie. The
captain says that there ought to have been only ten or twelve passengers
by rights, and had the rush been anticipated, a larger steamer would
have been provided. Personally, I consider that half our shipmates ought
to be thrown overboard. They are only travelling round the world for
pleasure, and that sort of dissipation leads to the forming of hasty and
intemperate opinions. Anyhow, give me freedom and the cockroaches of the
British India, where we dined on deck, altered the hours of the meals by
plebiscite, and were lords of all we saw. You know the chain-gang
regulations of the P. and O.: how you must approach the captain standing
on your head with your feet waving reverently; how you must crawl into
the presence of the chief steward on your belly and call him
Thrice-Puissant Bottle-washer; how you must not smoke abaft the
sheep-pens; must not stand in the companion; must put on a clean coat
when the ship's library is opened; and crowning injustice, must order
your drinks for tiffin and dinner one meal in advance? How can a man
full of Pilsener beer reach that keen-set state of quiescence needful
for ordering his dinner liquor? This shows ignorance of human nature.
The P. and O. want healthy competition. They call their captains
commanders and act as though 'twere a favour to allow you to embark.
Again, freedom and the British India for ever, and down with the
comforts of a coolie ship and the prices of a palace!

There are about thirty women on board, and I have been watching with a
certain amount of indignation their concerted attempt at killing the
stewardess,--a delicate and sweet-mannered lady. I think they will
accomplish their end. The saloon is ninety feet long, and the stewardess
runs up and down it for nine hours a day. In her intervals of relaxation
she carries cups of beef-tea to the frail sylphs who cannot exist
without food between 9 A.M. and 1 P.M. This morning she advanced to me
and said, as though it