Then home by the wide Marina, and the promenading Eurasians, and well-to-do traders in carriages. The official people must all be at the Club and Gymkhana, or at Church. For choice I like the beach in the morning, the wide sweep of ocean, the full sun on the endless sandy shores, and the solitude.
This is a jotting, reduced by reproduction, of a native fishing in the surf—all that I have "creeled" to-day.
… By Jove—it's ten minutes to the New Year—time to think of our friends and relations, who will be sitting down to lunch and thinking of us; and toasting us for a certainty. So, in the words of the song, of which these are all I know—
"Here's another kind love,
Here's another kind love,
Here's a health to everybody."
But first we must toast "Relations and Friends," and then "The Memory of the Dead and the Health of the Living," which being done, properly and in order, we may go to the window to hear the bells of St Giles and the cheering at the Cross.… Ah! but it is too far.
CHAPTER XXII
1st January 1906
