Begin to regret dinners on board the Grantully Castle.  The other day was regretting the Amphitryon.  Don’t go so far back as the Albemarle-Street Amphitryon, quite satisfied with a simple Donald Currie. [Mem.—­The proverb hath much truth in it that saith, “Go farther and fare worse.”] Sick of chicken.  With poetic epigrammacy might say, “Quite sick Of chick.”  Stringy chickens, too!  One has to tug at them; sort of game of “poulet-hauly”—­as DRUMMY would say.  Though were he here, I doubt if he would say anything.  He certainly would eat nothing:  probably would only open his mouth to observe, “I’m off!” and then we should see him no more.  Quite right.  So would I—­but for “my oath, my Lord, my oath!” (N.B.—­This is a quotation.  Sure of it.  Where from?  Don’t know.  Tragedy probably; sounds tragic.  No matter.  Can give it with effect in a speech, and Members turn to one another and ask, “What’s that from?” When they ask me confidentially afterwards, I reply with an air of intense surprise, “What! don’t you know!  Well!!” and I turn on my heel, leaving CHUCKLEHEAD, M.P., annoyed with himself,—­“plante la” as DRUMMY would say,—­for being so ignorant, and for having displayed his ignorance so palpably.  Off he goes to British Museum and searches for quotation.  This gives him opportunity of acquiring much useful knowledge, which, but for me, he would not have had.  Rather a long parenthesis this.  So—­on we goes again.)

TO THE MINES.

A propos of exploring, the other day, a digger’s assistant came up to me and inquired “If I had,” as I understood him, “my gin pack’d.”  I returned that I never took spirits.  Found out subsequently that word was spelt “mijinpacht,” which is African-Dutch for “lease.”  Well, why didn’t he say so before?  Of course I have, and plenty of ’em; else why am I here?

To-day went to see the ore in the Robinson Crusoe Mines.  As D.W. would say, “The site strikes me with ore!”

Much interested, of course, in inspecting the Salisbury Mine.  Naturally, I put in my claim for the Salisbury.  What’s in a name and a family, if one can’t get some good out of ’em?  Intend to start the “Uncle Mine.”  Fine chance.  Any place where there’s a large and fluctuating Pop-ulation (with emphasis on the “Pop"), the Uncle Mine is a certainty.”  But Oh, for the “pop,”—­I mean the dear old fizz,—­and the older it is, the dearer it is,—­at the Amphitryon.

“IS LIFE WORTH LIVING?”

The Transvaal’s the place for living in.  Here life is life, be it never so lively.  The only nuisance is the Boer; and the Boer’s a hass, or rather a mule.  That’s my opinion of Boers individually and collectively; I make no concessions to them; hang ’em, they’ve already got enough.  If this country had been in the hands of Englishmen, or Americans, or both jointly (talking of jointly, we’d have had better dinners than we get now but of this anon—­) with a certain person whom I can mention, and who