as Nagasaki. It was quaint and pretty, but hotter than any West
Indian port in the hot season. He was economising, he said, and had
saved nearly three thousand five hundred dollars. Once he had provided
for his wife, he hoped to be able to make a few long voyages to places
east of Japan. "You are much to be envied," he goes on to his sister,
"for your chances of travel. What a pity you are not able to devote
yourself to writing and painting in a place like Algiers--full of
romance and picturesqueness. If you go there, don't fail to see the old
Arab part of the city--the Kasbah, I think they call it. How about the
Continent? Have you tried Southern Italy? And don't you think that one
gets all the benefit of travel only by keeping away from fashion-resorts
and places consecrated by conventionalism? Nothing to me is more
frightful than a fashionable seaside resort--such as those of the
Atlantic Coast. My happiest sojourns of this sort have been in little
fishing villages, and little queer old unknown towns, where there are no
big vulgar hotels, and where one can dress and do exactly as one
pleases.

"What will you do with your little man when he grows up? Army, or Civil
Service? Whatever you do, never let him go to America, and lose all his
traditions. Australia would be far better. I expect he will be
gloriously well able to take care of himself anywhere,--judging by his
father, but I have come to the belief that one cannot too soon begin the
cultivation of a single aim and single talent in life. This is the age
of specialism. No man can any longer be successful in many things. Even
the 'general practitioner' in medicine has almost become obsolete.

"Nothing seems to me more important now for a little boy than the
training of his linguistic faculties,--giving him every encouragement in
learning languages by ear--(the only natural way); and your travelling
sometimes with him will help you to notice how his faculties are in that
direction. But perhaps it will be possible for him to pass all his life
in England. (For me, England, Ireland and Scotland mean the same thing.)
That would be pleasant indeed.... When I think of your little man with
the black eyes, I hope that his life will always be in the circle of
English traditions, wherever the English Flag flies, there remain.

"I suppose you know that in this Orient the construction of the family
is totally different to what it is in Europe.... We are too conceitedly
apt to