As I walked purposefully down Kilindini Road, past the rows of Indian shops full of brummagem- the ivory knickknacks, fly whisks, and musical chamber pots that called up nostalgic memoirs of Sixth Avenue-my nerves tingled with exultation.

Though not constitutionally averse to the crackle of greenbacks, I learned many years ago-twenty-eight, in fact-that of all the roads to insolvency open to my profession, entanglement in a revue is the shortest.

The meal, of course, was ghastly-fried plaice smothered in cream sauce, the usual Brussels sprouts boiled beyond cognizance, and a soggy plum tart as fibrous as corrugated paper.

To aggravate matters, a protegee of the composer's, a 55-dollar-a-week soprano with whom he had dallied in good faith, was loudly demanding a featured spot in the show, on pain of divulging the escapade to her husband.

A basic ingredient in the manufacture of perfume, the attar-a heavy, pale-yellow oil stored in small metal drums-had been put up as collateral by Bulgaria, in lieu of gold, at the Moscow Narodny Bank, a Communist finance house for East-West trade.

A pharmacist in the Rue de Vaugirard, absorbed in bottling leeches and obviously a figment of Rene Clair's imagination, paused long enough to patch me up grudgingly, and I went into a brasserie hard by for a restorative.

I've got Bright s disease and he has mine.

I'm half Scotch-Irish on both sides, and when I lose my temper-brother, I go.

He was done with tinsel and sawdust, he declaimed; he wanted no more of the theater and its cutthroat machinations.

If travel has taught me nothing more, and it certainly has, it's this: you never know when some trifling incident, utterly without significance, may pitchfork you into adventure or, by the same token, may not.