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74
Sunday, 30 August
Today included a rather strange experience for me, one which had formerly been rather habitual, but which had grown, during the spring, most unfamiliar. We took lunch with Aline Stuart. Tom and Violet Ennis were there, and Mr. Terman. This was our first good opportunity to see the new Mrs. Ennis. Tom had been engaged all of last year, notoriously engaged, and busy saving money to take him to Japan for his wedding and wedding trip. And when he finally got started his experiences were such as one encounters constantly in the movies but disbelieves in real life. Planning to take the boat from Tientsin he missed it, and had to take the train around to Dairen to catch it. Arrived in Mukden he found that because of the floods no trains were going through to Dairen, and in roder to make the boat, the last one that would get him there in time, he got an airplane with a drunked Russian pilot to take him over. He was sick all of the way, and the trip cost him a hundred dollars gold, but he got there in time for the boat. The boat, however, was full in the first class and they would not sell him a ticket and they would nt let him ride in Chinese cabin. He stood on the pier and when he saw a man with very little baggage going on he called to him and persuaded the man to allow him to go on as his friend. The man agreed, and Tom accompanied the stranger to his stateroom, pulled up the mattress of the bunk and climbed down inside of it. When a couple1/2hours out at sea the man went to the steward and said that his friend had become sick on the boat nad had gone to sleep in the cabin,unawares that the boat was pulling out. Was there now any way that he could pay his passage and get over to Japan? There was; one man had not come and his cabin was vacant.

Meanwhile Tom was busy telegraphing and wirelessing to send messages to Violet and to try to get information about the Australia. At Shimonoseki he was told that the boat was a day early and he got off into the tender to go ashore to catch the fast train when word came that the boat was really a day late. He climbed back on the steamer and proceeded around to Kobe, where he arrived in good time.

When the Australia came in she had to lie out in the harbor because of a storm, and in spite of the fact that Tom had sent six wireless messages to Violet she had received none of them. When the