“Don’t you see,” said Hubbard, “that that’s a mere example and now done with?  Do please remember that we have got on to Irish frieze.  You must allow me to explain the game in my own way.  Now your man tackles the next person in turn.  What building, he asks, does he remind you of? and the answer is Cologne Cathedral or the Bank of England.”

“It would be difficult to choose anyone who reminded me of either of those celebrated structures,” I said, “but I’ll take the Bank of England for choice.”

“But,” said Hubbard, “you don’t take either of them, you see it in a flash and it’s gone.”

“What do you see in a flash?” I said.

“The building that the man who has gone out and is asking questions in order to guess the person everybody is thinking of reminds you of,” said Hubbard.

“Oh, yes.  That makes it absolutely clear,” said Butterfield.  “Let’s get to work.  Personally I haven’t got beyond scrambled eggs.”

“And I am lost in tapioca,” I said.  “Let’s get to bed.”  That’s as far as Hubbard ever got with the explanation of his game.  We left him struggling and went to bed.

* * * * *

THE TRUTHFUL TRAVELLER.

  All my life I’ve been a rover; I have ranged the wide world over,
    And I’ve had the very devil of a time;
  I’ve philandered through Alsatia with the nautch-girl and the geisha;
    I have heard the bells of San Marino chime.

  I’ve hobnobbed in Honolulu with the Zouave and the Zulu,
    I have fought against the Turks at Spion Kop;
  In a spirit of bravado I’ve accosted the MIKADO
    And familiarly addressed him as “Old Top.”

  I’ve been captured by banditti, kissed a squaw in Salt Lake City,
    Carved my name upon the tomb of LI HUNG CHANG,
  And been overcome by toddy where the turbid Irrawaddy
    Winds its way from Cincinnati to Penang.

  I have crossed the far-famed ferry from Port Said to Pondicherry;
    In a droschky shot the rapids at Hongkong;
  I have pounded to a jelly dancing dervishes at Delhi,
    And I’ve chased the chimpanzee at Chittagong.

  I’ve smoked baksheesh in pagodas, stood a Dago Scotch-and-sodas,
    Scaled the mighty Mississippi’s snow-clad peaks,
  Galloped madly on a llama through lagoons at Yokohama
    And found rubies at Magillicuddy’s Reeks.

  Where the Tagus joins the Hooghly I have bowled the wily googly,
    I have heard the howdah’s howl at Hyderabad;
  On a rickshaw I’ve gone sailing, with my boomerang impaling
    Hooded cobras on the ice-floes off Bagdad.

  I have slain the beri-beri with a ball from my knobkerry;
    I have climbed the Pole and leapt across the Line;
  I’ve seen seals in Abyssinia and volcanoes in Virginia,
    And I’ve dived into the shark-infested Rhine.

  From the pemmican’s fierce claws and the tiffin’s gaping jaws
    I have never shrunk in abject terror yet;
  In the jungle I have tracked them and attacked them and then hacked them
    Into mincemeat with my trusty calumet.