are at their wits’ end how to treat them.  The instinct of the British shopkeeper fights desperately with his disposition to be shocked.  From the Ashantee gentlemen’s gestures it can only be concluded that white shirts are wanted, but when white shirts are shown the negroes make furious objection to the plaited bosoms.  They want shirts such as are fashionable at home.  It is easy to be seen that they are Dandy Jims in Africa.  They are all young, and, in a sense, spruce.  One of them carries a little switch cane, evidently just bought:  while he examines the shirts, testing the strength of the stuff by pulling it with his two hands, he holds his cane between his bare legs for safe-keeping.

Sitting in the billiard-room of the hotel in the evening smoking our cigars, Bunker and I are accosted by a brisk little man, who asks us if we play billiards.  Bunker doesn’t.  I do sometimes at home, but not the English game.

“Oh, we play the ’Merican game too.  ’Appy to play the ’Merican game with you, sir.”

“Try him a game,” says Bunker.  “It won’t hurt you.”

Not liking to refuse an invitation from a polite Englishman, who appears to be a stranger here, I consent.  This is billiard-room etiquette the world over.

The cue is like a whip-stock.  It positively runs down to a point not bigger than a shirt-button, and it bends like a switch.  The balls are not much larger than marbles.  To make up for this, the table is big enough for a back yard, broad, high, dull of cushion, and with six huge pockets.  I am ignominiously beaten.  My ball jumps like a living thing.  It hops off the table upon the floor at almost every shot, and when it does not go on the floor it goes into one of the six yawning pockets.  The pockets bear the same relative proportion to the balls that a tea-cup bears to a French pea.  At the end of the game my ball has been everywhere except where I intended it to go, and I have “scratched” thirty.

“A hundred’s the game,” says the Englishman, putting up his cue.  “One shilling.”

I wonder if this is an English custom—­to pay your victor a shilling, instead of paying the keeper of the tables.  But as there is no one else to pay, I pay the Englishman.  Bunker has fallen asleep in his chair.

“Going on the Continent?” the Englishman asks.

“Not at present.  We return to London first, and go from there.”

“’Ave you got a guide?”

I am on the point of saying that guides are a nuisance I do not tolerate, when the Englishman hands me a bit of paste-board.  “There is my card, sir,” he says.  “A.  SHARPE, Interpreter and Courier.”  On the opposite side I read—­

SPEAKS SPRICHT PARLE PARLA French, Franzoesich, Frangais, Francese, German, Deutsch, Allemand, Tedesco, Italian and Italienisch u.  Italien et Italiano ed English Englisch Anglais Inglese fluently sehr gelaeufig. courrament. correntemente.

At present he has charge of this billiard-room, but he is ready to follow me to the ends of the earth for a period of not less than three months.  I tell him I can get on without a guide.