down on deck in
which cigarette ends are to be buried and pipes knocked out, so there's
a chance for us all yet!

This morning I made a water-colour for my engineer friend, as a return
for the wine vase he gave me. I thought he'd like a sketch of a Highland
burn in spate--thought it would be cooling. How it came about I cannot
explain, but I did him a recollection of a burn within five to seven
miles, by sea, of his birthplace in Jura! I'd put him down as coming
from the Clyde.

The biggest event for me in this day's reckoning was the discovery that
the distinguished judge I observed contemplating the blue waves for some
minutes, was an artist before he took to Law! You might have knocked me
down with a feather--five years in Lauren's studio in Paris, and three
pictures on the line the year he was called to the bar and two of them
sold! We had a great talk about art and all the rest of it. He and
Jacomb Hood and others were fellow students, and he and Jacomb Hood and
this writer, and various artists and newspaper men are to meet at his
board in Calcutta and have a right good Bohemian evening as in days of
yore.

Is it not curiously sanguine this belief, to which I've seen quite old
men clinging--that you can repeat a good time. It is possible we will
have a good evening, and talk lots of shop, for we all know far more
about it now, than we did then; but it was what we did not know, that
gave the charm to student days.

We talk art and technique pretty hard, but I can't quite get over the
shock--an artist--become a judge--A Quartier Latin Art Student--a Judge
of the High Court--with a fixed income, and on his way to Calcutta,
perhaps to hang folk!

We had sports to-day and a sing-song in the evening. The sports were
very amusing; the bolster fight on a spar doesn't sound interesting, but
it was; it got quite exciting towards the end as the wiry cavalry
colonel, hero of many a stricken field, knocked out all comers, young or
old. Egg and spoon races and threading needles were a little stupid, but
what tableaux the groups of fair women made, with the bright dresses
and complexions, and the jolly brown young men, all in the soft light
that was filtering through the awning and blazing up from under its edge
from the sea.

[Illustration]

Sunday--at Aden--loafed all morning--vowed I'd not paint--bustle and
movement too great--painted hard in afternoon--horribly difficult--too
many people--ladies skirt in palette--ma