Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/232

 *vere one. I have no doubt that all the hotels where I have lately been a guest use the best coffee obtainable, but their way of making it is not my way. You get the best coffee at home because it is made your way As in coffee, so it is in politics, religion, the choice of a wife, and a hundred other things: what suits others does not suit you. You want coffee made your way; and you are entitled to it I do not say my way of making coffee is the best, but I do say it suits me better than any other way I have ever tried. I venture to say that nine out of ten guests at every hotel abuse the coffee Every morning at 6:30 there is a rap on my door. I look out, and find a Hindu servant with tea. I tell him I do not want tea, but would appreciate hot water for shaving. This the Hindu cannot understand, so I now take the tea, and shave with it I was on the "Anchises" so long that I almost used up a cake of shaving-soap. I wonder I didn't get the scurvy; they say that is the scourge of a long sea voyage.

—This day opened with genuine inauguration weather; the storm of yesterday continued all night, and seemed as fierce as ever at 8 The Natal Mercury of this morning devoted a full page to the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson, as president. It also printed an editorial of a column and a quarter entitled, "The Future of America," which was funny because of absurd statements. "Rural America," the editorial says, "knows little of decent