ir cells
at midnight. And I ground gently and sit in the silvered shadows with
little bewildered shrimps flicking against me, and unlanguaged
thoughts come and go--impossible similes, too poignant phrases to be
stopped and fettered with words, and I am neither scientist nor man
nor naked organism, but just mind. With the coming of silence I look
around and again consciously take in the scene. I am very glad to be
alive, and to know that the possible dangers of jungle and water have
not kept me armed and indoors. I feel, somehow, as if my very daring
and gentle slipping-off of all signs of dominance and protection on
entering into this realm had made friends of all the rare but possible
serpents and scorpions, sting-rays and perai, vampires and electric
eels. For a while I know the happiness of Mowgli.

And I think of people who would live more joyful lives in dense
communities, who would be more tolerant, and more certain of
straightforward friendship, if they could have as a background a
fundamental hour of living such as this, a leaven for the rest of
what, in comparison, seems mere existence.

At last I go back between the bamboos and their shadows, from unreal
reality into a definiteness of cot and pajamas and electric torch. But
wild nature still keeps touch with me; for as I write these lines,
curled up on the edge of the cot, two vampires hawk back and forth so
close that the wind from their wings dries my ink. And the soundness
of my sleep is such that time does not exist between their last
crepuscular squeak and the first wiry twittering of a blue tanager, in
full sunshine, from a palm overhanging my beach.

V

A BIT OF USELESSNESS

A most admirable servant of mine once risked his life to reach a
magnificent Bornean orchid, and tried to poison me an hour later when
he thought I was going to take the plant away from him. This does not
mean necessarily that we should look with suspicion upon all gardeners
and lovers of flowers. It emphasizes, rather, the fact of the
universal and deep-rooted appreciation of the glories of the vegetable
kingdom. Long before the fatal harvest time, I am certain that Eve
must have plucked a spray of apple blossoms with perfect impunity.

A vast amount of bad poetry and a much less quantity of excellent
verse has been written about flowers, much of which follows to the
letter Mark Twain's injunction about Truth. It must be admitted that
the relations existing between