Royal Berkshire
with whom I dined at Malta came on board and after hearing the Old Kent
Road were on the point of Mutiny and refused to return to barracks.
Great is the Power of Chevalier and great is his power for taking you
back to London with three opening bars. Malta was the queerest place I
ever got into. It was like a city, country and island made of cheese,
mouldy cheese, and fresh limburger cheese with holes in it. You sailed
right up to the front door as it were and people were hanging out of
the windows smoking pipes and looking down on the deck as complacently
as though having an ocean steamer in the yard was as much a matter of
course as a perambulator. There were also women with black hoods which
they wear as a penance because long ago the ladies of Malta got
themselves talked about. I was on shore about five hours and saw some
interesting things and with that and Brindisi and the voyage I can make
a third letter but Tunis is writ on my heart like Calais.

Today Cleveland is inaugurated and I took all the passengers down at
the proper time and explained to them that at that moment a great man
was being made president and gave them each an American cocktail to
remember it by and in which to toast him I am getting to be a great
speech maker and if there are any more anniversaries in America I shall
be a second Depew.

It is late but it is still the season here and it will be gay, but what
I want to do now is to go off on a little trip inland although Cairo is
the worst of all for it is surrounded by deserts and nothing to shoot
but antelope and foxes and those I SCORN. I want Zulus and lions. I
shall be greatly disappointed if I do not have something to do outside
of Cairo for I have had no adventures at all. It is just as civilized
as Camden only more exciting and beautiful although Camden is exciting
when you have to get there and back in time for the last edition. From
what I have already seen I am ready to spend a month in Cairo and then
confess to knowing nothing of it. But we shall see. There may be a W
A R or a lion hunt or something yet if there is not I shall come back
here again. I must fire that Winchester off at least once just for all
the trouble it has given me at custom houses. Something exciting must
happen or I shall lose faith in the luck of the British army which
marches shoulder to shoulder with mine. If I don't have any adventures
I shall write essays on art after this like