"He was young and had never shaved the down which grew on his cheeks and the points of his chin. Young as he was he had the lines of half a century scored under his eyes and on his temples, thin lines on clear, yellow skin. The whites of his eyes were yellow too, as though he had suffered from jaundice. Which he had, as I learned very soon after he opened upon me in a clear, sonorous voice that rolled the r's and beat like a flail on the labials and diphthongs. He wore a blue dungaree boiler-suit, which is a combination affair, you know, and on his head he had an old, greasy, red fez. It seemed to me a preposterous piece of fancy dress up a creek on the Niger River. But I found later, to my astonishment, that Moslems were common enough there; that they had soaked through from the Mediterranean littoral and the head-waters of the Nile generations ago. Not that this gentleman had soaked through, or was a Moslem either. He had, as he informed me, been all over the world. But it was not his fez, or his jaundiced complexion, or his fret-work, or his languages, or his travels that marked him out for me at the time. It was the simple fact that he was my first foreigner. In spite of my having come in upon him, forced myself upon him as it were, he gave me the impression of being the aggressor. I felt myself throwing up defences against him. It is popular to gibe at the Englishman's taciturnity abroad. There is a reason. The foreigner, not the best nor the aristocratic foreigner perhaps, but the common run of him, act like amiable invaders. They take possession of us, of our language, our idioms, our games, our clothes, our machinery, ideas, everything. They nod and smile and say knowingly 'How are you. All right, eh?' and assume an intimacy you don't permit with your own family. This young chap in the fez had other points, but at the outset I had the most extraordinary sensation of leaning against the door of my soul, trying to keep him out. I don't suppose it struck him that way. I dare say he thought me rather subdued and untidy. He was very hospitable, asking me to 'take a seat' at his bench, and showing me his fret-work. He told me he never wasted any time, as that was the way to succeed. 'If at first you don't succeed, try, try again,' he sang with the accents all on the wrong syllables. He was very proud of this aphorism, evidently thinking it the secret of our imperial race. And he told me his history. He was born in Damascus, he said, so he knew Arabic. His father emigrated to Bolivia, so he spoke Spanish. Then they pulled up stakes and went to New Zealand, where he learned English. For some mysterious reason they again took ship and came to the Cameroons, where he learned German. His family was now in the Brazils, where no doubt they were learning Portuguese; but he himself had found a very good job here. He was saving money to go to England. He seemed to have no roots, as it were. I wondered, as I have