RED LETTER DAYS 



The night before, the dinner table at the hotel in 

 Tunis had been decorated with the daintiest of wild 

 cyclamen ; and, resolved to seek out their hiding place, CYCLAMEN 



an early train had landed us at the foot of pine-clad 

 hills, whose broken surface looked promising. Surely 

 here their home would be, and as we wandered up 

 the shady slope, noting many a pushing growth and 

 foliage of unfamiliar form, it was not long before we 

 espied the sought-for heart-shaped leaf among the 

 stones. A little higher up and the vision burst upon 

 us ; yes, there they were in full-flowered wild pro- 

 fusion ; the mountain side w r as carpeted with the 

 marbled leaves with their stalks and undersides all 

 reddish-purple. 



I know of few things in life which give us such 

 moments of delight as is experienced when we look 

 for the first time upon a mass of any flower growing 

 in wild profusion, or when we find perhaps only a 

 single spike or so of some long-sought rarity ; in 

 those few moments life overflows with joy just 

 because we worship. Such ' splendid occasions ' 

 are ' beyond words to express, for one ecstatic 

 moment we seem carried beyond the mundane plane 



27 



