lh 'l llidilw

rest house, and there, away from the motley throng of tour—
ists who were feeding at long tables, was a little table all
spread with stuff from our boat by our dear little waiter
Philippe, who was standing guard, ready to serve us. We
were perfectly overcome.

We have been having such fun with Mr. Charles Wimper,
an English artist who does very good things of birds.13 He is
the lovely, jovial sort of Englishman who says “Oh he’s really
a human being not a silly ass,” or “He’s a rum bird” per—
fectly naturally. He has one of the most delicious senses of
humor that I’ve ever known. He made a spurious antique
and keeps passing it off on people and taking them in, just
the way these funny natives do. It was a highly colored piece
of wood with a handle and a place the size of an eye cut out,
and the entire thing painted with sacred symbols, cats,
moons, suns, etc, and inlaid with glittering stuff, with a large
piece of mother of pearl inlaid at the top. He came saunter—
ing down the hall and sat down next to me carefully opening
the box in which this thing was laid. “Are you interested in
antiquities” he said. “If so this curious old thing might inter—
est you. It is said to be Queen Thi’s eyeglass and the owner
values it at a thousand pounds. I am the owner” At that l
tumbled for until then I thought that he really was taking
the thing seriously. When I laughed he saw that I was on and
told me that he had not only concouted [sic] the thing it—
self but had invented the idea himself just for fun out of an
old peice lsicl of wood, a bit of mommy lsicl cloth, and had
inlaid it with a flat collar button (i. e. the bit that reflected
the light of the sun as he had carefully pointed out) and the
glittering stuff was “tinfoil off a penny cigar that I had once."
I didnt know that such beautiful souls existed outside of

books” ..

Clara Louise reports on 25 February that she has “written two
or three bits and am sending them to Louis Wiley tonight so shall
await developments with interest," Again, on 22 April: “Did Louis
Wiley tell you that the times had taken my squib about I. P. Mor—
gan’s buying the island of Philae in Egypt. They made quite a
thing of it. Louis wrote me a very nice letter about it and said
that he had sent me a check for it to our London address. . .I’ve
sent him more things, not quite of that stamp for one doesnt
come upon such bits of news every day.”H Partly through Judge