At dinner, six o'clock, the same people assembled whom we had talked
with on deck and seen at luncheon and breakfast this second day out,
and at dinner the evening before. That is to say, three journeying
ship-masters, a Boston merchant, and a returning Bermudian who had been
absent from his Bermuda thirteen years; these sat on the starboard side.
On the port side sat the Reverend in the seat of honor; the pale young
man next to him; I next; next to me an aged Bermudian, returning to his
sunny islands after an absence of twenty-seven years. Of course, our
captain was at the head of the table, the purser at the foot of it. A
small company, but small companies are pleasantest.
No racks upon the table; the sky cloudless, the sun brilliant, the blue
sea scarcely ruffled; then what had become of the four married couples,
the three bachelors, and the active and obliging doctor from the rural
districts of Pennsylvania?--for all these were on deck when we
sailed down New York harbor. This is the explanation. I quote from my
note-book:
Thursday, 3.30 P.M. Under way, passing the Battery. The large
party, of four married couples, three bachelors, and a cheery,
exhilarating doctor from the wilds of Pennsylvania, are evidently
traveling together. All but the doctor grouped in camp-chairs on
deck.
Passing principal fort. The doctor is one of those people who has
an infallible preventive of seasickness; is flitting from friend to
friend administering it and saying, “Don't you be afraid; I know
this medicine; absolutely infallible; prepared under my own
supervision.” Takes a dose himself, intrepidly.
4.15 P.M. Two of those ladies have struck their colors,
notwithstanding the “infallible.” They have gone below. The other
two begin to show distress.
5 P.M. Exit one husband and one bachelor. These still had their
infallible in cargo when they started, but arrived at the
companionway without it.
5.10. Lady No. 3, two bachelors, and one married man have gone
below with their own opinion of the infallible.
5.20. Passing Quarantine Hulk. The infallible has done the
business for all the party except the Scotchman's wife and the
author of that formidable remedy.
Nearing the Light-Ship. Exit the Scotchman's wife, head drooped on
stewardess's shoulder.
Entering the open sea. Exit doctor!
The rout seems permanent; hence the smallness of the company at table
since the voyage began. Our captain is a grave, handsome Hercules of
thirty-five, with a brown hand of such majestic size that one cannot
eat for admiring it and wondering if a single kid or calf could furnish
material for gloving it.
Conversation not general; drones along between couples. One catches a
sentence here and there. Like this, from Bermudian of thirteen years'
absence: “It is the nature of women to ask trivial, irrelevant, and
pursuing questions--questions that pursue you from a beginning
in nothing to a run-to-cover in nowhere.” Reply of Bermudian of
twenty-seven years' absence: “Yes; and to think they have logical,
analytical minds and argumentative ability. You see 'em begin to whet up
whenever they smell argument in the air.” Plainly these be philosophers.
Twice since we left port our engines have stopped for a couple of
minutes at a time. Now they stop again. Says the pale young man,
meditatively, “There!--that engineer is sitting down to rest again.”
Grave stare from the captain, whose mighty jaws cease to work, and
whose harpooned potato stops in midair on its way to his open, paralyzed
mouth. Presently he says in measured tones, “Is it your idea that the
engineer of this ship propels her by a crank turned by his own hands?”
The pale young man studies over this a moment, then lifts up his
guileless eyes, and says, “Don't he?”
Thus gently falls the death-blow to further conversation, and the dinner
drags to its close in a reflective silence, disturbed by no sounds but
the murmurous wash of the sea and the subdued clash of teeth.
After a smoke and a promenade on deck, where is no motion to discompose
our steps, we think of a game of whist. We ask the brisk and capable
stewardess from Ireland if there are any cards in the ship.
“Bless your soul, dear, indeed there is. Not a whole pack, true for ye,
but not enough missing to signify.”
However, I happened by accident to bethink me of a new pack in a morocco
case, in my trunk, which I had placed there by mistake, thinking it to
be a flask of something. So a party of us conquered the tedium of the
evening with a few games and were ready for bed at six bells, mariner's
time, the signal for putting out the lights.
There was much chat in the smoking-cabin on the upper deck after
luncheon to-day, mostly whaler yarns from those old sea-captains.
Captain Tom Bowling was garrulous. He had that garrulous attention to
minor detail which is born of secluded farm life or life at sea on long
voyages, where there is little to do and time no object. He would sail
along till he was right in the most exciting part of a yarn, and then
say, “Well, as I was saying, the rudder was fouled, ship driving before
the gale, head-on, straight for the iceberg, all hands holding their
breath, turned to stone, top-hamper giving 'way, sails blown to ribbons,
first one stick going, then another, boom! smash! crash! duck your head
and stand from under! when up comes Johnny Rogers, capstan-bar in hand,
eyes a-blazing, hair a-flying... no, 'twa'n't Johnny Rogers... lemme see
... seems to me Johnny Rogers wa'n't along that voyage; he was along
one voyage, I know that mighty well, but somehow it seems to me that he
signed the articles for this voyage, but--but--whether he come along or
not, or got left, or something happened--”
And so on and so on till the excitement all cooled down and nobody cared
whether the ship struck the iceberg or not.
In the course of his talk he rambled into a criticism upon New England
degrees of merit in ship building. Said he, “You get a vessel built away
down Maine-way; Bath, for instance; what's the result? First thing you
do, you want to heave her down for repairs--that's the result! Well,
sir, she hain't been hove down a week till you can heave a dog through
her seams. You send that vessel to sea, and what's the result? She wets
her oakum the first trip! Leave it to any man if 'tain't so. Well,
you let our folks build you a vessel--down New Bedford-way. What's the
result? Well, sir, you might take that ship and heave her down, and keep
her hove down six months, and she'll never shed a tear!”
Everybody, landsmen and all, recognized the descriptive neatness of
that figure, and applauded, which greatly pleased the old man. A moment
later, the meek eyes of the pale young fellow heretofore mentioned came
up slowly, rested upon the old man's face a moment, and the meek mouth
began to open.
“Shet your head!” shouted the old mariner.
It was a rather startling surprise to everybody, but it was effective
in the matter of its purpose. So the conversation flowed on instead of
perishing.
There was some talk about the perils of the sea, and a landsman
delivered himself of the customary nonsense about the poor mariner
wandering in far oceans, tempest-tossed, pursued by dangers, every
storm-blast and thunderbolt in the home skies moving the friends by
snug firesides to compassion for that poor mariner, and prayers for his
succor. Captain Bowling put up with this for a while, and then burst out
with a new view of the matter.
“Come, belay there! I have read this kind of rot all my life in poetry
and tales and such-like rubbage. Pity for the poor mariner! sympathy for
the poor mariner! All right enough, but not in the way the poetry puts
it. Pity for the mariner's wife! all right again, but not in the way the
poetry puts it. Look-a here! whose life's the safest in the whole world?
The poor mariner's. You look at the statistics, you'll see. So don't you
fool away any sympathy on the poor mariner's dangers and privations and
sufferings. Leave that to the poetry muffs. Now you look at the other
side a minute. Here is Captain Brace, forty years old, been at sea
thirty. On his way now to take command of his ship and sail south from
Bermuda. Next week he'll be under way; easy times; comfortable quarters;
passengers, sociable company; just enough to do to keep his mind healthy
and not tire him; king over his ship, boss of everything and everybody;
thirty years' safety to learn him that his profession ain't a dangerous
one. Now you look back at his home. His wife's a feeble woman; she's a
stranger in New York; shut up in blazing hot or freezing cold lodgings,
according to the season; don't know anybody hardly; no company but her
lonesomeness and her thoughts; husband gone six months at a time.
She has borne eight children; five of them she has buried without her
husband ever setting eyes on them. She watched them all the long nights
till they died--he comfortable on the sea; she followed them to the
grave, she heard the clods fall that broke her heart he comfortable on
the sea; she mourned at home, weeks and weeks, missing them every day
and every hour--he cheerful at sea, knowing nothing about it. Now look
at it a minute--turn it over in your mind and size it: five children
born, she among strangers, and him not by to hearten her; buried,
and him not by to comfort her; think of that! Sympathy for the poor
mariner's perils is rot; give it to his wife's hard lines, where it
belongs! Poetry makes out that all the wife worries about is the dangers
her husband's running. She's got substantialer things to worry over,
I tell you. Poetry's always pitying the poor mariner on account of his
perils at sea; better a blamed sight pity him for the nights he can't
sleep for thinking of how he had to leave his wife in her very birth
pains, lonesome and friendless, in the thick of disease and trouble and
death. If there's one thing that can make me madder than another, it's
this sappy, damned maritime poetry!”
Captain Brace was a patient, gentle, seldom speaking man, with a
pathetic something in his bronzed face that had been a mystery up to
this time, but stood interpreted now since we had heard his story. He
had voyaged eighteen times to the Mediterranean, seven times to India,
once to the arctic pole in a discovery-ship, and “between times” had
visited all the remote seas and ocean corners of the globe. But he said
that twelve years ago, on account of his family, he “settled down,” and
ever since then had ceased to roam. And what do you suppose was this
simple-hearted, lifelong wanderer's idea of settling down and ceasing to
roam? Why, the making of two five-month voyages a year between Surinam
and Boston for sugar and molasses!
Among other talk to-day, it came out that whale-ships carry no doctor.
The captain adds the doctorship to his own duties. He not only gives
medicines, but sets broken limbs after notions of his own, or saws
them off and sears the stump when amputation seems best. The captain is
provided with a medicine-chest, with the medicines numbered instead of
named. A book of directions goes with this. It describes diseases and
symptoms, and says, “Give a teaspoonful of No. 9 once an hour,” or “Give
ten grains of No. 12 every half-hour,” etc. One of our sea-captains
came across a skipper in the North Pacific who was in a state of great
surprise and perplexity. Said he:
“There's something rotten about this medicine-chest business. One of
my men was sick--nothing much the matter. I looked in the book: it said
give him a teaspoonful of No. 15. I went to the medicine-chest, and
I see I was out of No. 15. I judged I'd got to get up a combination
somehow that would fill the bill; so I hove into the fellow half a
teaspoonful of No. 8 and half a teaspoonful of No. 7, and I'll be hanged
if it didn't kill him in fifteen minutes! There's something about this
medicine-chest system that's too many for me!”
There was a good deal of pleasant gossip about old Captain “Hurricane”
Jones, of the Pacific Ocean--peace to his ashes! Two or three of
us present had known him; I particularly well, for I had made four
sea-voyages with him. He was a very remarkable man. He was born in a
ship; he picked up what little education he had among his shipmates;
he began life in the forecastle, and climbed grade by grade to the
captaincy. More than fifty years of his sixty-five were spent at sea.
He had sailed all oceans, seen all lands, and borrowed a tint from all
climates. When a man has been fifty years at sea he necessarily knows
nothing of men, nothing of the world but its surface, nothing of the
world's thought, nothing of the world's learning but it's A B C, and
that blurred and distorted by the unfocused lenses of an untrained mind.
Such a man is only a gray and bearded child. That is what old Hurricane
Jones was--simply an innocent, lovable old infant. When his spirit was
in repose he was as sweet and gentle as a girl; when his wrath was up he
was a hurricane that made his nickname seem tamely descriptive. He
was formidable in a fight, for he was of powerful build and dauntless
courage. He was frescoed from head to heel with pictures and mottoes
tattooed in red and blue India ink. I was with him one voyage when he
got his last vacant space tattooed; this vacant space was around his
left ankle. During three days he stumped about the ship with his ankle
bare and swollen, and this legend gleaming red and angry out from a
clouding of India ink: “Virtue is its own R'd.” (There was a lack of
room.) He was deeply and sincerely pious, and swore like a fishwoman. He
considered swearing blameless, because sailors would not understand an
order unillumined by it. He was a profound biblical scholar--that is, he
thought he was. He believed everything in the Bible, but he had his own
methods of arriving at his beliefs. He was of the “advanced” school
of thinkers, and applied natural laws to the interpretation of all
miracles, somewhat on the plan of the people who make the six days of
creation six geological epochs, and so forth. Without being aware of it,
he was a rather severe satire on modern scientific religionists. Such
a man as I have been describing is rabidly fond of disquisition and
argument; one knows that without being told it.
One trip the captain had a clergyman on board, but did not know he was
a clergyman, since the passenger-list did not betray the fact. He took
a great liking to this Reverend Mr. Peters, and talked with him a great
deal; told him yarns, gave him toothsome scraps of personal history, and
wove a glittering streak of profanity through his garrulous fabric that
was refreshing to a spirit weary of the dull neutralities of undecorated
speech. One day the captain said, “Peters, do you ever read the Bible?”
“Well--yes.”
“I judge it ain't often, by the way you say it. Now, you tackle it in
dead earnest once, and you'll find it'll pay. Don't you get discouraged,
but hang right on. First, you won't understand it; but by and by things
will begin to clear up, and then you wouldn't lay it down to eat.”
“Yes, I have heard that said.”
“And it's so, too. There ain't a book that begins with it. It lays over
'm all, Peters. There's some pretty tough things in it--there ain't any
getting around that--but you stick to them and think them out, and when
once you get on the inside everything's plain as day.”
“The miracles, too, captain?”
“Yes, sir! the miracles, too. Every one of them. Now, there's that
business with the prophets of Baal; like enough that stumped you?”
“Well, I don't know but--”
“Own up now; it stumped you. Well, I don't wonder. You hadn't had any
experience in raveling such things out, and naturally it was too many
for you. Would you like to have me explain that thing to you, and show
you how to get at the meat of these matters?”
“Indeed, I would, captain, if you don't mind.”
Then the captain proceeded as follows: “I'll do it with pleasure.
First, you see, I read and read, and thought and thought, till I got
to understand what sort of people they were in the old Bible times, and
then after that it was all clear and easy. Now this was the way I put
it up, concerning Isaac--[This is the captain's own mistake]--and the
prophets of Baal. There was some mighty sharp men among the public
characters of that old ancient day, and Isaac was one of them. Isaac
had his failings--plenty of them, too; it ain't for me to apologize
for Isaac; he played it on the prophets of Baal, and like enough he was
justifiable, considering the odds that was against him. No, all I say
is, 'twa'n't any miracle, and that I'll show you so's't you can see it
yourself.
“Well, times had been getting rougher and rougher for prophets--that
is, prophets of Isaac's denomination. There was four hundred and fifty
prophets of Baal in the community, and only one Presbyterian; that is,
if Isaac was a Presbyterian, which I reckon he was, but it don't say.
Naturally, the prophets of Baal took all the trade. Isaac was pretty
low-spirited, I reckon, but he was a good deal of a man, and no doubt
he went a-prophesying around, letting on to be doing a land-office
business, but 'twa'n't any use; he couldn't run any opposition to amount
to anything. By and by things got desperate with him; he sets his head
to work and thinks it all out, and then what does he do? Why, he
begins to throw out hints that the other parties are this and that and
t'other--nothing very definite, maybe, but just kind of undermining
their reputation in a quiet way. This made talk, of course, and finally
got to the king. The king asked Isaac what he meant by his talk. Says
Isaac, 'Oh, nothing particular; only, can they pray-down fire from
heaven on an altar? It ain't much, maybe, your majesty, only can they do
it? That's the idea.' So the king was a good deal disturbed, and he went
to the prophets of Baal, and they said, pretty airy, that if he had
an altar ready, they were ready; and they intimated he better get it
insured, too.
“So next morning all the children of Israel and their parents and the
other people gathered themselves together. Well, here was that great
crowd of prophets of Baal packed together on one side, and Isaac walking
up and down all alone on the other, putting up his job. When time was
called, Isaac let on to be comfortable and indifferent; told the other
team to take the first innings. So they went at it, the whole four
hundred and fifty, praying around the altar, very hopeful, and doing
their level best. They prayed an hour--two hours--three hours--and so
on, plumb till noon. It wa'n't any use; they hadn't took a trick. Of
course they felt kind of ashamed before all those people, and well they
might. Now, what would a magnanimous man do? Keep still, wouldn't he? Of
course. What did Isaac do? He graveled the prophets of Baal every way
he could think of. Says he, 'You don't speak up loud enough; your god's
asleep, like enough, or maybe he's taking a walk; you want to holler,
you know'--or words to that effect; I don't recollect the exact
language. Mind, I don't apologize for Isaac; he had his faults.
“Well, the prophets of Baal prayed along the best they knew how all the
afternoon, and never raised, a spark. At last, about sundown, they were
all tuckered out, and they owned up and quit.
“What does Isaac do now? He steps up and says to some friends of
his there, 'Pour four barrels of water on the altar!' Everybody was
astonished; for the other side had prayed at it dry, you know, and got
whitewashed. They poured it on. Says he, 'Heave on four more barrels.'
Then he says, 'Heave on four more.' Twelve barrels, you see, altogether.
The water ran all over the altar, and all down the sides, and filled up
a trench around it that would hold a couple of hogsheads-'measures,' it
says; I reckon it means about a hogshead. Some of the people were going
to put on their things and go, for they allowed he was crazy. They
didn't know Isaac. Isaac knelt down and began to pray; he strung along,
and strung along, about the heathen in distant lands, and about the
sister churches, and about the state and the country at large, and about
those that's in authority in the government, and all the usual program,
you know, till everybody had got tired and gone to thinking about
something else, and then, all of a sudden, when nobody was noticing, he
outs with a match and rakes it on the under side of his leg, and pff!
up the whole thing blazes like a house afire! Twelve barrels of water?
Petroleum, sir, PETROLEUM! that's what it was!”
“Petroleum, captain?”
“Yes, sir, the country was full of it. Isaac knew all about that. You
read the Bible. Don't you worry about the tough places. They ain't tough
when you come to think them out and throw light on them. There ain't a
thing in the Bible but what is true; all you want is to go prayerfully
to work and cipher out how 'twas done.”
At eight o'clock on the third morning out from New York, land was
sighted. Away across the sunny waves one saw a faint dark stripe
stretched along under the horizon--or pretended to see it, for the
credit of his eyesight. Even the Reverend said he saw it, a thing which
was manifestly not so. But I never have seen any one who was morally
strong enough to confess that he could not see land when others claimed
that they could.
By and by the Bermuda Islands were easily visible. The principal one
lay upon the water in the distance, a long, dull-colored body; scalloped
with slight hills and valleys. We could not go straight at it, but had
to travel all the way around it, sixteen miles from shore, because it is
fenced with an invisible coral reef. At last we sighted buoys, bobbing
here and there, and then we glided into a narrow channel among them,
“raised the reef,” and came upon shoaling blue water that soon further
shoaled into pale green, with a surface scarcely rippled. Now came the
resurrection hour; the berths gave up their dead. Who are these pale
specters in plug-hats and silken flounces that file up the companionway
in melancholy procession and step upon the deck? These are they which
took the infallible preventive of seasickness in New York harbor and
then disappeared and were forgotten. Also there came two or three faces
not seen before until this moment. One's impulse is to ask, “Where did
you come aboard?”
We followed the narrow channel a long time, with land on both sides--low
hills that might have been green and grassy, but had a faded look
instead. However, the land-locked water was lovely, at any rate, with
its glittering belts of blue and green where moderate soundings were,
and its broad splotches of rich brown where the rocks lay near the
surface. Everybody was feeling so well that even the grave, pale young
man (who, by a sort of kindly common consent, had come latterly to be
referred to as “The Ass”) received frequent and friendly notice--which
was right enough, for there was no harm in him.
At last we steamed between two island points whose rocky jaws allowed
only just enough room for the vessel's body, and now before us loomed
Hamilton on her clustered hillsides and summits, the whitest mass of
terraced architecture that exists in the world, perhaps.
It was Sunday afternoon, and on the pier were gathered one or two
hundred Bermudians, half of them black, half of them white, and all of
them nobbily dressed, as the poet says.
Several boats came off to the ship, bringing citizens. One of these
citizens was a faded, diminutive old gentleman, who approached our most
ancient passenger with a childlike joy in his twinkling eyes, halted
before him, folded his arms, and said, smiling with all his might and
with all the simple delight that was in him, “You don't know me, John!
Come, out with it now; you know you don't!”
The ancient passenger scanned him perplexedly, scanned the napless,
threadbare costume of venerable fashion that had done Sunday service no
man knows how many years, contemplated the marvelous stovepipe hat of
still more ancient and venerable pattern, with its poor, pathetic old
stiff brim canted up “gallusly” in the wrong places, and said, with a
hesitation that indicated strong internal effort to “place” the gentle
old apparition, “Why... let me see... plague on it... there's something
about you that... er... er... but I've been gone from Bermuda for
twenty-seven years, and... hum, hum ... I don't seem to get at it,
somehow, but there's something about you that is just as familiar to me
as--”
“Likely it might be his hat,” murmured the Ass, with innocent,
sympathetic interest.
So the Reverend and I had at last arrived at Hamilton, the principal
town in the Bermuda Islands. A wonderfully white town; white as snow
itself. White as marble; white as flour. Yet looking like none of these,
exactly. Never mind, we said; we shall hit upon a figure by and by that
will describe this peculiar white.
It was a town that was compacted together upon the sides and tops of
a cluster of small hills. Its outlying borders fringed off and thinned
away among the cedar forests, and there was no woody distance of curving
coast or leafy islet sleeping upon the dimpled, painted sea, but was
flecked with shining white points--half-concealed houses peeping out of
the foliage. The architecture of the town was mainly Spanish,
inherited from the colonists of two hundred and fifty years ago. Some
ragged-topped cocoa-palms, glimpsed here and there, gave the land a
tropical aspect.
There was an ample pier of heavy masonry; upon this, under shelter, were
some thousands of barrels containing that product which has carried the
fame of Bermuda to many lands, the potato. With here and there an onion.
That last sentence is facetious; for they grow at least two onions in
Bermuda to one potato. The onion is the pride and joy of Bermuda. It
is her jewel, her gem of gems. In her conversation, her pulpit, her
literature, it is her most frequent and eloquent figure. In Bermuda
metaphor it stands for perfection--perfection absolute.
The Bermudian weeping over the departed exhausts praise when he says,
“He was an onion!” The Bermudian extolling the living hero bankrupts
applause when he says, “He is an onion!” The Bermudian setting his son
upon the stage of life to dare and do for himself climaxes all counsel,
supplication, admonition, comprehends all ambition, when he says, “Be an
onion!”
When parallel with the pier, and ten or fifteen steps outside it,
we anchored. It was Sunday, bright and sunny. The groups upon the
pier--men, youths, and boys--were whites and blacks in about equal
proportion. All were well and neatly dressed; many of them nattily, a
few of them very stylishly. One would have to travel far before he would
find another town of twelve thousand inhabitants that could represent
itself so respectably, in the matter of clothes, on a freight-pier,
without premeditation or effort. The women and young girls, black and
white, who occasionally passed by, were nicely clad, and many were
elegantly and fashionably so. The men did not affect summer clothing
much, but the girls and women did, and their white garments were good to
look at, after so many months of familiarity with somber colors.
Around one isolated potato-barrel stood four young gentlemen, two black,
two white, becomingly dressed, each with the head of a slender cane
pressed against his teeth, and each with a foot propped up on the
barrel. Another young gentleman came up, looked longingly at the barrel,
but saw no rest for his foot there, and turned pensively away to seek
another barrel. He wandered here and there, but without result. Nobody
sat upon a barrel, as is the custom of the idle in other lands, yet
all the isolated barrels were humanly occupied. Whosoever had a foot
to spare put it on a barrel, if all the places on it were not already
taken. The habits of all peoples are determined by their circumstances.
The Bermudians lean upon barrels because of the scarcity of lamp-posts.
Many citizens came on board and spoke eagerly to the officers--inquiring
about the Turco-Russian war news, I supposed. However, by listening
judiciously I found that this was not so. They said, “What is the price
of onions?” or, “How's onions?” Naturally enough this was their first
interest; but they dropped into the war the moment it was satisfied.
We went ashore and found a novelty of a pleasant nature: there were
no hackmen, hacks, or omnibuses on the pier or about it anywhere, and
nobody offered his services to us, or molested us in any way. I said it
was like being in heaven. The Reverend rebukingly and rather pointedly
advised me to make the most of it, then. We knew of a boarding-house,
and what we needed now was somebody to pilot us to it. Presently
a little barefooted colored boy came along, whose raggedness was
conspicuously not un-Bermudian. His rear was so marvelously bepatched
with colored squares and triangles that one was half persuaded he had
got it out of an atlas. When the sun struck him right, he was as good
to follow as a lightning-bug. We hired him and dropped into his wake.
He piloted us through one picturesque street after another, and in due
course deposited us where we belonged. He charged nothing for his map,
and but a trifle for his services: so the Reverend doubled it. The
little chap received the money with a beaming applause in his eye which
plainly said, “This man's an onion!”
We had brought no letters of introduction; our names had been misspelled
in the passenger-list; nobody knew whether we were honest folk or
otherwise. So we were expecting to have a good private time in case
there was nothing in our general aspect to close boarding-house doors
against us. We had no trouble. Bermuda has had but little experience of
rascals, and is not suspicious. We got large, cool, well-lighted rooms
on a second floor, overlooking a bloomy display of flowers and flowering
shrubscalia and annunciation lilies, lantanas, heliotrope, jasmine,
roses, pinks, double geraniums, oleanders, pomegranates, blue
morning-glories of a great size, and many plants that were unknown to
me.