Viewing page 125 of 185
This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.
-98- (the girls) weighed about eighty pounds, and could carry double their weight if necessary. In the fields a girl can pick about 480 bushes a day. Most of the Sumatra tea goes to London, where it is blended with Ceylon or other tea. By itself it is rather strong, and inclined to be bitter unless brewed very carefully, but it gives good body to lighter teas. Camp life is full of amusement. Two little Chinese acrobats put on a show for us one morning, one of them being a good sleight-of-hand boy. The personnel of the Circus at the Pasar Malam visited us, and Bill had a grand time talking show business with them. Horas brought us a live centipede in a tin box, and had carefully put in a supply of rice for the critter to eat. We ordered toilet paper from the grocery store and got cayenne pepper. Barbara locks her door at night for fear of wandering pythons, and buys Cross and Blackwell Finest Refined British Table Salt to preserve her specimens. Miss Surbeck invited a boy friend to the hotel in honor of Bill's birthday, and the Coenraads feel hurt because they are not invited to the party, which we did not hear about until Mrs. C asked us if we had a party at the hotel. The Monday Night Club sent us a Ringling poster, with letters from all of them written on the back of it. Bill's birthday cake, instead of "Happy Birthday" said "Horas" in pink icing. Such little things as these keep us all happy, and give us something to talk about. We have not seen an American paper since January, and can't get much out of the occasional Dutch papers that come our way. Mrs. Marsh was here the other day, and when we asked her what was happening at home, the only news she could think of was that Jean Harlow was dead. I discard a pair of silk stockings, and find that the house boy is using them for dish cloths. July 7 - Barbara, Bill, and I started off fairly early in the morning for Brastagi, and reached there in time for lunch. We went up especially to see Harold Coolidge, and found him flat on his back in bed, having heart trouble as an aftermath of blood poisoning and fever, and very low in his mind having had to abandon his expedition in New Guinea. The ride up to Brastagi was lovely, but shortly after lunch, which we ate with the Davises and Mrs. Coolidge, rain began to fall, and the afternoon was cold and dismal. Even Sabayk was hidden from view, and dense clouds closed over the view of the rolling sulphur mists that we had seen when we were here before. We slept most of the afternoon, had tea with the Coolidges, and dinner with the Davises and Mrs. Coolidge. We heard tonight for the first time that Amelia Earhart was missing on her round-the-world flight. July 8 - Bill had a bad chill in the night and felt rotten this morning. We started home about nine o' clock, having the Davis boy
