A PLEASANT HOUSE. 205 



iusicle it a hearty Avelcome from a most agreeable German 

 gentleman and his Germnn engineer. A lady's hand I am 

 sorry to say the lady was not at home was evident enough 

 in the arrangements of the central room. Pretty things, a 

 piano, and good books, especially Longfellow and Tennyson, 

 told of cultivation and taste in that remotest wilderness. 

 The material hospitality was what it always is in the 

 West Indies ; and we sat up long into the night around 

 the open door, while the surf roared, and the palm-trees 

 sighed, and the fireflies twinkled, talking of dear old 

 Germany, and German unity, and the possibility of many 

 things which have since proved themselves unexpectedly 

 most possible. I went to bed, and to somewhat intermittent 

 sleep. First, my comrades, going to bed romping, like 

 English schoolboys, and not in the least like the effeminate 

 and luxurious Creoles who figure in the English imagination, 

 broke a four-post bedstead down among them with hideous 

 roar and ruin ; and had to be picked up and called to order 

 l)y their elders. Next, the wind, which ranged freely through 

 the open roof, blew my bedclothes off. Then the dogs ex- 

 ploded outside, probably at some henroost-robbing opossum, 

 and had a chevy through the cocos till they tree'd their game, 

 and bayed it to their hearts' content. Then something else 

 exploded and I do not deny it set me more aghast than 

 I had been fur many a day exploded, I say, under the 



