All through his various sea trips—these sea trips rather bored him—he writes as follows: “There are plenty of people with whom it is really pleasant to talk in English or in those variants of volapuk which with me pass for French and German.” He encloses me a photograph of Kermit and himself and Selous, the naturalist, which shows a merry moment on one of those same sea trips. In May of that year he writes from Juja Farm, Nairobi:
“Really, I have been so busy that I have had no time to myself, and even have not been regularly homesick; of course, down at bottom I am homesick the whole time, but it isn’t able to come to the surface, so to speak, because when I am not actually hunting, I am lying still because I am tired out.... This house is as pretty and comfortable as possible, and my host and hostess are the very kindest of the kind. I am sitting on a cool verandah with vines growing over the trellises, having just returned from a morning hunt in which I killed a python and an impala antelope. Yesterday I killed two antelopes, and the day before, a rhino and a hippo, and the day before that, Kermit killed a leopard which charged him viciously after mauling one of the beaters. I have also killed six lions,—four of them big ones. I am sunburned and healthy, and look like a burly and rather unkempt ruffian.
“Kermit has really done very well. He is very handy, both cool and daring, in fact, rather too daring sometimes.
“Darling sister, I think of you continually, and would so love to see you....”
Later, on his return to the same farm after an extended hunting trip, he says:
“I have worked very hard writing the articles about this trip, and have put my heart into them, for this trip has been to me one of absorbing interest; but of course, I haven’t any idea whether I have written anything worth reading.
“I am happy to say that I know nothing whatever of politics at home, and I hope to keep in the same blessed state of ignorance until I return next June. Then I shall take up political work again, but probably not in any direct partisan sense,—that is, I will go in with the Outlook people on such matters as the conservation of natural resources, the control of big corporations, and how to deal with socialism, and the like.”
The above shows clearly how strong were his intentions not to interfere in any way with the administration then in power.
On June 21, in a letter headed “On Safari,” he writes:
“I am so busy writing my Scribner articles that I have but little time to write family letters, except of course, the letters to Edith. I have had plenty to write about for Scribner’s, but it is not always easy to write in the field, and I do not really know how I have done it. Sometimes when I come in early from a hunt, I just point blank refuse to write at all, and spend an hour or two reading a book from the ‘Pigskin Library,’ which has been the utmost possible comfort and pleasure. Fond though I am of hunting and of wilderness life, I could not thoroughly enjoy either if I were not able, from time to time, to turn to my books. I am anxiously looking for news of your Helen and the baby that is to be.