THE TRIBES ON MY FRONTIER. 



minds, like their betters, and to me their fierce or tender 

 little passions, their loves and hates, their envies and 

 jealousies, and their small vanities, beget a sense of fellow- 

 feeling which makes their presence society. 



The touch of Nature which makes the whole world kin 

 is infirmity. A man without a weakness is insupportable 

 company, and so is a man who does not feel the heat. 

 There is a large grey ring-dove that sits in the blazing sun 

 all through the hottest hours of the day, and says coo-coo, 

 coo, coo-coo, coo, until the melancholy, sweet monotony of 

 that sound is as thoroughly mixed up in the cells of my 

 .brain with 1 10 in the shade as physic in my infantile 

 memories with the peppermint lozenges which used to 

 "put away the taste." But as for those creatures which 

 confess the heat, and come into the house and gasp, I feel 

 drawn to them. I should like to offer them cooling drinks. 

 Not that all my midday guests are equally welcome : I 

 could dispense, for instance, with the grey-ringed bee which 

 has just reconnoitred my ear for the third time, and guesses 

 it is a key-hole she is away just now, but only, I fancy, for 

 clay to stop it up with. There are others also to which I 

 would give their conge if they would take it. But good, 

 bad, or indifferent, they give us their company whether we 



