Sick with the sense of human ingratitude I sank upon the sand.

The island became my home.

There I eked out a miserable existence, feeding on sand and gravel and dressing myself in cactus plants.  Years passed.  Eating sand and mud slowly undermined my robust constitution.  I fell ill.  I died.  I buried myself.

Would that others who write sea stories would do as much.

IX. —­ Caroline’s Christmas:  or, The Inexplicable Infant

IT was Xmas—­Xmas with its mantle of white snow, scintillating from a thousand diamond points, Xmas with its good cheer, its peace on earth—­Xmas with its feasting and merriment, Xmas with its—­well, anyway, it was Xmas.

Or no, that’s a slight slip; it wasn’t exactly Xmas, it was Xmas Eve, Xmas Eve with its mantle of white snow lying beneath the calm moonlight—­and, in fact, with practically the above list of accompanying circumstances with a few obvious emendations.

Yes, it was Xmas Eve.

And more than that!

Listen to where it was Xmas.

It was Xmas Eve on the Old Homestead.  Reader, do you know, by sight, the Old Homestead?  In the pauses of your work at your city desk, where you have grown rich and avaricious, does it never rise before your mind’s eye, the quiet old homestead that knew you as a boy before your greed of gold tore you away from it?  The Old Homestead that stands beside the road just on the rise of the hill, with its dark spruce trees wrapped in snow, the snug barns and the straw stacks behind it; while from its windows there streams a shaft of light from a coal-oil lamp, about as thick as a slate pencil that you can see four miles away, from the other side of the cedar swamp in the hollow.  Don’t talk to me of your modern searchlights and your incandescent arcs, beside that gleam of light from the coal-oil lamp in the farmhouse window.  It will shine clear to the heart across thirty years of distance.  Do you not turn, I say, sometimes, reader, from the roar and hustle of the city with its ill-gotten wealth and its godless creed of mammon, to think of the quiet homestead under the brow of the hill?  You don’t!  Well, you skunk!

It was Xmas Eve.

The light shone from the windows of the homestead farm.  The light of the log fire rose and flickered and mingled its red glare on the windows with the calm yellow of the lamplight.

John Enderby and his wife sat in the kitchen room of the farmstead.  Do you know it, reader, the room called the kitchen?—­with the open fire on its old brick hearth, and the cook stove in the corner.  It is the room of the farm where people cook and eat and live.  It is the living-room.  The only other room beside the bedroom is the small room in front, chill-cold in winter, with an organ in it for playing “Rock of Ages” on, when company came.  But this room is only used for music and funerals.  The real room of the old farm is the kitchen.  Does it not rise up before you, reader?  It doesn’t?  Well, you darn fool!