A LOST FEBRUARY 



to their sick bodies as best he could, living in an 

 old musty house with two or three slatternly ser- 

 vants, his wife in Scotland, and his two sons being 

 educated at Cambridge. Another year and a half 

 was to elapse before he could take a vacation to 

 visit them and his native land. His seemed to me 

 a bitter cup, but he was not making wry faces over 

 it. Let me again draw upon my note-book: "At 

 Dr. Turner's, Monday, February 10, 4 p. m., 1902. 

 A world of wooded knolls, very primitive. Alti- 

 tude three thousand feet, mercury 70°, a slow rain 

 falling ; wraiths of fog rising from the woods as at 

 home. Small thatched cabins of the natives here 

 and there visible through the trees. Like our back- 

 woods places, except the curious dumpling-shaped 

 hills scattered on all hands, — no long, sweeping 

 lines and curves. 



" The note of the solitaire comes up from the wet 

 woods below us, almost identical with that of the 

 Oregon robin in Alaska, — very pleasing to me. 

 Now a mockingbird alights on a stake a few yards 

 from the house and sings for a moment, — the most 

 abundant songster about here, — not at all a fine 

 songster to me." 



In the evening we sat about the table with much 

 talk, while the rain came steadily down. That 

 night we slept three in a bed, — a hard bed and 

 harder pillows. Sleep would not come to me; I 

 charged it to the altitude of three thousand feet; at 



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