Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/397

 a Johannesburg electrical engineer, on his way to America to study late developments in the science. Another is Sammy Marks, a theatrical manager, who will shortly open a new theatre at Nairobi, British East Africa. This town is 350 miles inland from Mombasa, and on the way there he will pass by rail through as good a game country as there is in Africa. His wife looks and talks like an American girl, and, being accused of it by me, replied that she was glad of it. She was born in Paris, but has lived in Africa since she was a little girl. Still another man at our table is the Frenchman before referred to, one of the politest and oddest characters I have ever known. He is an automobile agent, and told me that on his present trip he sold eighty-five machines in Africa. He doesn't like the Germans on the ship, and makes them all the trouble he possibly can. One day at dinner he ordered fish, and six different kinds of meat, which he nibbled at, and sent away. He always drinks two kinds of wine at dinner, and sometimes three. He keeps the waiter so busy that the others at the table complain of neglect. The food on the "Burgermeister" is surprisingly good and abundant I suppose there was never a chief steward on an ocean-going vessel who was not a mean man. He it is who must say "no" when passengers become unreasonable. When a woman complains to a retail grocer of one of his clerks, the grocer sides with the woman, but at heart he believes the clerk was right. It is the same way when a passenger complains to the captain of the chief steward: the captain is sympathetic, but believes the steward is right. Our chief steward is a big, good-natured man, and while