th now; and the last thing I always do before
going to bed is to go out and look first straight before me, where the
Plough hangs luminous and low over the sea, and then stroll toward the
right-hand or eastern side of the veranda and gaze up at the beautiful
Cross through the rustling, tall tree-tops. It is much too cold now to sit
out in the wide veranda and either watch the stars or try to catch a
glimpse of the monkeys peeping up over the edge of the ravine in the
moonlight, thereby awakening poor rheumatic old Boxer's futile rage by
their gambols. My favorite theory is that one is never so cold as in a
tropical country, and I have had great encouragement in that idea lately.
We are always regretting that no fireplace has been included in the
internal arrangements of this house, and when we go out to dinner part of
the pleasure of the evening consists in getting well roasted in front of a
coal-fire in the drawing-room. I am assured that a few months hence I
shall utterly deny this said theory, and refuse to believe the fireplaces
I see occasionally could ever be used except as receptacles for pots of
ferns and large-leaved plants. At present, however, it is, as I say,
delightfully, bracingly cold in the morning and evening, and almost too
cold for comfort at night unless indeed you are well provided with
blankets. We take long walks of three or four miles of an evening,
starting when the sun sinks low enough for the luxuriant hedges by the
roadside to afford us occasional shelter, and returning either in the
starlight dusk or in the crisper air of a moonlight evening. In every
direction the walk is sure to be a pretty one, whether we have the hill of
the Corps-de-Garde before us, with its distinctly-marked profile of a
French soldier of the days of the Empire lying with crossed hands, the
head and feet cutting the sky-line sharp and clear, or the bolder outlines
of blue Mount Ory or cloud-capped Pieter Both. Our path always lies
through a splendid tangle of vegetation, where the pruning-knife seems the
only gardening tool needed, and where the deepening twilight brings out
many a heavy perfume from some hidden flower. Above us bends a vault of
lapis-lazuli, with globes of light hanging in it, and around us is a
heavenly, soft and balmy air. Whenever I say to a resident how delicious I
find it all, he or she is sure to answer dolefully, "Wait till the hot
weather!" But my idea is, that if there _is_ this terrible time in