Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/136

 York theatrical people, there, and several others we knew on the "Sonoma." The Blaneys leave next Saturday for the Philippine Islands and China, by a ship of twenty-seven hundred tons; it is so small that it cannot accommodate more than two dozen first-class passengers. Nothing could induce me to take that trip; the ship is too small. I leave on the 12th for Durban, in South Africa, on the "Anchises," a ship of 12,000 tons, and have been grumbling because it is not larger Another American I met there is W. B. Knight, born in New York state, and reared in the Standard Oil Co. family at Cleveland, Ohio. He is now connected with the Texas company, but received all his training with the Standard. There is a great deal of romance connected with Mr. Knight's business career. He has lived in Persia, India, China, Japan, Australia, the Straits Settlements, and half a dozen other strange places. His wife is the daughter of another wandering oil man, and they were married at Canton, China, at the American Legation, by a preacher from Pennsylvania. His wife is with him here, and they are both anxious to get home: both declare that this is their last trip—that they are tired of hotel, ship and railroad life. Mr. Knight said to me: "I am now an opponent of the Standard Oil Co., but have no hesitancy in saying that the manner in which that company is persecuted by the government is a disgrace. I have been intimate with Standard affairs a quarter of a century, and have never known the company to be guilty of a disreputable or dishonest act. The company with which I have been connected a year, the Texas company, is composed almost entirely