not the thing to convince this sort.  He ought to have been put through a quartz-mill until the “tuck” was taken out of him, and then boiled till we came again.  We got a good deal of sport out of him, but not enough sustenance to leave the victory on our side.  No matter; we had potatoes and a pie and a sociable good time.  Then a ramble through the town, which is a quaint one, with interesting, crooked streets, and narrow, crooked lanes, with here and there a grain of dust.  Here, as in Hamilton, the dwellings had Venetian blinds of a very sensible pattern.  They were not double shutters, hinged at the sides, but a single broad shutter, hinged at the top; you push it outward, from the bottom, and fasten it at any angle required by the sun or desired by yourself.

All about the island one sees great white scars on the hill-slopes.  These are dished spaces where the soil has been scraped off and the coral exposed and glazed with hard whitewash.  Some of these are a quarter-acre in size.  They catch and carry the rainfall to reservoirs; for the wells are few and poor, and there are no natural springs and no brooks.

They say that the Bermuda climate is mild and equable, with never any snow or ice, and that one may be very comfortable in spring clothing the year round, there.  We had delightful and decided summer weather in May, with a flaming sun that permitted the thinnest of raiment, and yet there was a constant breeze; consequently we were never discomforted by heat.  At four or five in the afternoon the mercury began to go down, and then it became necessary to change to thick garments.  I went to St. George’s in the morning clothed in the thinnest of linen, and reached home at five in the afternoon with two overcoats on.  The nights are said to be always cool and bracing.  We had mosquito-nets, and the Reverend said the mosquitoes persecuted him a good deal.  I often heard him slapping and banging at these imaginary creatures with as much zeal as if they had been real.  There are no mosquitoes in the Bermudas in May.

The poet Thomas Moore spent several months in Bermuda more than seventy years ago.  He was sent out to be registrar of the admiralty.  I am not quite clear as to the function of a registrar of the admiralty of Bermuda, but I think it is his duty to keep a record of all the admirals born there.  I will inquire into this.  There was not much doing in admirals, and Moore got tired and went away.  A reverently preserved souvenir of him is still one of the treasures of the islands:  I gathered the idea, vaguely, that it was a jug, but was persistently thwarted in the twenty-two efforts I made to visit it.  However, it was no matter, for I found out afterward that it was only a chair.

There are several “sights” in the Bermudas, of course, but they are easily avoided.  This is a great advantage—­one cannot have it in Europe.  Bermuda is the right country for a jaded man to “loaf” in.  There are no harassments; the deep peace and quiet of the country sink into one’s body and bones and give his conscience a rest, and chloroform the legion of invisible small devils that are always trying to whitewash his hair.  A good many Americans go there about the first of March and remain until the early spring weeks have finished their villainies at home.