Dearest Crumbcake,
I write to you today under a most extraordinary circumstance: I fear that my travels have been entirely for
naught. First, I came to discover that there were no lions in Malaysia. Now it is to my great surprise that I find these people have mastered not one but two alphabets: the Portuguese have given them a Romanized hand, and the Arabs have lent them the script of the Mohammedans. My hopes are dashed; no thesis, and, as they are now quite ruined by Mediterranean habits of script, as correspondents they would be useless. All that remains is the mystery of the foot. Having sent inquiries into the meagre harbor town, I have found no evidence of monopedial Caucozoids, with the exception of an Australian sailor whose foot was lost at sea some ten years ago. (Can, I wonder, the Australians truly be considered Caucasian? Without the rigors of climate that we experience, I suspect they have begun to revert to earlier forms.) Still, the island is very large, and an unguessable fate may have befallen our monopod yet.
I confess that the whole subject has begun to fascinate me. Though I know not from which German corpus the foot was lopped, I have named the poor soul "Victor". Surely locating him and delivering his foot, now preserved in brandy, is a noble task to end this less than successful venture. Once that is done, I will speed home to you with haste and vigor.
It may interest you to know that I am suffering from malaria. The local cure for this, as I have access to no other, is to be sewn into the abdomen of a partially decayed donkey, from which I now write. As the carcass slowly putrefies, its heat, combined with the raging fever my body now endures, drives out the terrible biota which are the culprits. You would be amused to see me, swaddled up to the neck and with only a narrow hole cut from the stomach through which to push my left forearm. The animal, though lacking viscera, is otherwise whole, with it's front legs tied to the body to aid in balance. A most amusing treatment. Surely my consonants' downstrokes betray the unnatural temperatures at which I swelter. In the hand is revealed the soul, which finds expression in the body. I noted as much in the Pricipae Graphologae, which you would do well to read again. I do not want my son to mature in a house of ignorant penmanship. Simply removing the colon is not enough. The moral impulse of the child must emerge both from within the body and without, in the nurturant environment.
Sewn up as I am, I have been unable to accurately monitor my feccations, save that they are regular and plentiful. I can hope the same for you and young Albert.
Semper Te Amos,
James