Alice: An Adultery

27th—38th days.—The voyage takes ten days, after four of which a day is “ lost,” evidently on the 180th degree. The time exactly corresponds to that occupied by the fast steamers from Hawaii to Japan, and I think we may assume that that island is the one where the affair began. This is confirmed by a punning allusion to Diamond Head in the 27th day. This becomes perfectly clear if we accept the Editor’s conjecture “hula” for the indecipherable word in the 9th day. It is presumed that they landed in Yokohama, as the following day they visit Kamakura. It is strange how the writer can have come down to the state in which my friend the Editor, found him. He could evidently write and obtain money from home (47th day), and his actions are quite difficult to understand unless we assume the whole “ Alice ” episode to be a gor- geous fiction with the place and time references slyly inserted, the more surely to ensnare the feet of an investigator. This I am rather inclined to xvii