The next morning, at what seemed a very early hour, the little white table-waiter appeared suddenly in my room and shot a single word out of himself “Breakfast!”

This was a remarkable boy in many ways.  He was about eleven years old; he had alert, intent black eyes; he was quick of movement; there was no hesitation, no uncertainty about him anywhere; there was a military decision in his lip, his manner, his speech, that was an astonishing thing to see in a little chap like him; he wasted no words; his answers always came so quick and brief that they seemed to be part of the question that had been asked instead of a reply to it.  When he stood at table with his fly-brush, rigid, erect, his face set in a cast-iron gravity, he was a statue till he detected a dawning want in somebody’s eye; then he pounced down, supplied it, and was instantly a statue again.  When he was sent to the kitchen for anything, he marched upright till he got to the door; he turned hand-springs the rest of the way.

“Breakfast!”

I thought I would make one more effort to get some conversation out of this being.

“Have you called the Reverend, or are—­”

“Yes s’r!”

“Is it early, or is—­”

“Eight-five.”

“Do you have to do all the ‘chores,’ or is there somebody to give you a—­”

“Colored girl.”

“Is there only one parish in this island, or are there—­”

“Eight!”

“Is the big church on the hill a parish church, or is it—­”

“Chapel-of-ease!”

“Is taxation here classified into poll, parish, town, and—­”

“Don’t know!”

Before I could cudgel another question out of my head, he was below, hand-springing across the back yard.  He had slid down the balusters, headfirst.  I gave up trying to provoke a discussion with him.  The essential element of discussion had been left out of him; his answers were so final and exact that they did not leave a doubt to hang conversation on.  I suspect that there is the making of a mighty man or a mighty rascal in this boy—­according to circumstances—­but they are going to apprentice him to a carpenter.  It is the way the world uses its opportunities.

During this day and the next we took carriage drives about the island and over to the town of St. George’s, fifteen or twenty miles away.  Such hard, excellent roads to drive over are not to be found elsewhere out of Europe.  An intelligent young colored man drove us, and acted as guide-book.  In the edge of the town we saw five or six mountain-cabbage palms (atrocious name!) standing in a straight row, and equidistant from each other.  These were not the largest or the tallest trees I have ever seen, but they were the stateliest, the most majestic.  That row of them must be the nearest that nature has ever come to counterfeiting a colonnade.  These trees are all the same height, say sixty feet; the trunks as