Steamship Cleopatra,

The next morning.

My dear Mademoiselle Hummingbird,

In your negligée you looked like a humming bird and I do not know your real name, so may I call you this? Here I am writing to you, weak, weak man that I am. I have no other helper than my dictionary, and it takes me a long time for the writing in English, but I feel you will like it better.

Did I fish[2] much for you last evening? Fishing is not good for going in the Heaven, they say, but I did one good action. The devil pushed me very strongly to kiss you when you came into my cabin, but I bowed you out. That was meritorious. (You can say, “Beautiful, indeed!” as said Wellington, seeing the charge of the French Imperial Guards at the battle of Waterloo.) I hope how God will give me good mark for that in his golden book.

[2] Intended for flirt.

[2]

I am reading much today, trying to forget you. The language in the French books is very instructive to the mind but destructive to the [Pg 4]moral. The vice of the French or the bragging virtue of the English—which is better? I finish this letter by begging you to walk with me again in the moonlight. Send me a line if you will. I say goodbye till tonight.

[Pg 4]

Boris.

P.S. You have given me very much pleasure. It is sufficient for me to see and hear you. It make me pairfectly happy just so. I find you very charming.

How shall I say it—like or love you? In French they have only the one word, and the womans understand what they want. How you think? I like lively American girl, not afraid of anything, not even of wicked man.

PRINCE BORIS TO POLLY

Steamship Cleopatra,

The following day.

Dear Mademoiselle Avis,

Did you leave me last night when I try to join you on deck because you not like my letter or was it my foreign gesticulations which frightened you or you find my funs stupid? You angry when I kiss your hands in the moonlight perhaps?[Pg 5] But why you not tell me your name and where you live when home?

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