I gave a dinner-party at an hotel to eleven people, all officers or
officers' wives. The conversation turned on birthplaces, and the
answers given were so curious, that I wrote them all down. Not only
were all my guests soldiers and soldiers' wives, but they were nearly
all the sons and daughters of soldiers as well. One major had been
born at Cape Town; his very comely wife in Barbados. The other major
had been born at Meerut in India, his wife at Quebec, and her
unmarried sister in Mauritius; and so it was with all of them. Of
those twelve people of pure British blood, I was the only one who had
been born in England or in Europe; even the subaltern had been born in
Hong-Kong. I do not thing that stay-at-homes quite realise the
existence of this little world of people journeying from end to end of
the earth in the course of their duty, and taking it all as a matter
of course.

I regret that the Imperial West India Direct Line should now be
defunct, for this gave a monthly direct service between Bristol and
Bermuda, and I can conceive of no pleasanter winter quarters for those
desirous of escaping the rigours of an English January and February.
Ten days after leaving Bristol, ten days it must be confessed of
extremely angry seas, the ship dropped her anchor in Grassy Bay, and
the astonished arrival from England found ripe strawberries, new peas,
and new potatoes awaiting his good pleasure. No visitor could fail to
be delighted with the pretty, prosperous little island, and with its
genial and hospitable inhabitants. For Americans, too, the place was a
godsend, for in forty-eight hours they could escape from the extreme
and fickle climate of New York, and find themselves in warm sunshine,
tempered, it is true, by occasional downpours, for Nature, realising
that the inhabitants were dependent on the rainfall for their water