"“the crack speaker, brilliant and sarcastic . . . The clubland of Capetown looks to him as its humorous and sententious oracle: he is a good hand at cards and the best of good company. . . He often looks and often professes to be with one foot in the grave, and his most brilliant efforts are said to be made after a few weeks’ light diet of champagne (doctor’s orders). His robustest friends, however, expect him to survive to crack jokes on their epitaphs.”"