I did a bit of a supposed
epic describing our tryst at the ford of the Gasegase; and Belle and I
made a little book of caricatures and verses about incidents on the
visit.

_Tuesday._--The wild round of gaiety continues. After I had written to
you yesterday, the brain being wholly extinct, I played piquet all
morning with Graham. After lunch down to call on the U.S. consul, hurt
in a steeplechase; thence back to the new girls' school which Lady J.
was to open, and where my ladies met me. Lady J. is really an orator,
with a voice of gold; the rest of us played our unremarked parts;
missionaries, Haggard, myself, a Samoan chief, holding forth in turn;
myself with (at least) a golden brevity. Thence, Fanny, Belle, and I to
town, to our billiard room in Haggard's back garden, where we found
Lloyd and where Graham joined us. The three men first dressed, with the
ladies in a corner; and then, to leave them a free field, we went off to
Haggard and Leigh's quarters, whereafter all to dinner, where our two
parties, a brother of Colonel Kitchener's, a passing globe-trotter, and
Clarke the missionary. A very gay evening, with all sorts of chaff and
mirth, and a moonlit ride home, and to bed before 12.30. And now to-day,
we have the Jersey-Haggard troupe to lunch, and I must pass the morning
dressing ship.

_Thursday, Sept. 1st._--I sit to write to you now, 7.15, all the world
in bed except myself, accounted for, and Belle and Graham, down at
Haggard's at dinner. Not a leaf is stirring here; but the moon overhead
(now of a good bigness) is obscured and partly revealed in a whirling
covey of thin storm-clouds. By Jove, it blows above.

From 8 till 11.15 on Tuesday, I dressed ship, and in particular cleaned
crystal, my specialty. About 11.30 the guests began to arrive before I
was dressed, and between while I had written a parody for Lloyd to sing.
Yesterday, Wednesday, I had to start out about 3 for town, had a long
interview with the head of the German Firm about some work in my new
house, got over to Lloyd's billiard-room about six, on the way whither I
met Fanny and Belle coming down with one Kitchener, a brother of the
Colonel's. Dined in the billiard-room, discovered we had forgot to order
oatmeal; whereupon in the moonlit evening, I set forth in my tropical
array, mess jacket and such, to get the oatmeal, and meet a young fellow
C.--and not a bad young fellow either, only an idiot--as drunk as
Croesus. He wept with me, he w