shan't be able to imagine you in your new surroundings, and in London
I knew pretty well what you would be doing every minute of the day.
Knowing, as we do, many of the same people, when you wrote "I have
been dining with the Maxwell-Tempests to meet the So-and-sos," I could
picture it all even to little Mrs. Maxwell-Tempest's attitudes. I
was only in Germany once for three days, and I came away with an
impression of a country weird as to food, feathery as to beds, and
crammed full of soldiers; but I dare say it is a very good place to
write a book. And now--my heartiest congratulations on having a book
to write. It sounds--pardon me for saying it--a very dull subject, but
if I were a little wiser I expect I should see how important it
is, and anyway I have enough sense to perceive that it is a great
compliment to be asked to write it. What fun to be a man and have a
career! In my more exalted moments it is sometimes borne in on me that
I should have been a man and a diplomatist. I feel, though I admit
with no grounds to speak of, that I might have been a great success in
that most interesting profession. One never knows, and by putting my
foot in it very conscientiously all round, I might have earned for
myself a reputation of Machiavellian cunning!

What do you think I met at dinner last night? A Travelling Radical
Member of Parliament!

Of course I had read of them--often--and knew exactly what sort of
creatures they are--fearful wild fowl who come to India for six
weeks--

"Comprehend in half a mo'
What it takes a man ten years or so
To know that he will never know,"