expense or their own in the village elders and story-tellers you will often find the qualities of Scheherazade and Sancho Panza combining to produce a very pretty wit and nimbleness of repartee. And, withal, these people have certain things that we, with all our superiority, may well envy,-the faculty of contented industry, of finding joy in simple household things. Let us not too greatly pity them: I doubt if my boat-coolie, sunning himself after a meal of fish and rice, and telling his pals a story bluer than the deepest azure of the Arabian Nights, would change with John D. Rockefeller. If he did, John might be a happier

man.

In the grey shadows of false dawn, as I stand at the boat's bows and watch the last stars faint and die, I hear the farmers making for their fields, laughing as they go, by twos and threes, and singing (in that quaint falsetto which Europe outgrew in the Middle Ages) their bucolic joys and legendary amours. Singing they go, to their back-breaking labour, to toil as monotonous as the buffalo's eternal penance at the water-wheel; yet all day long, by field and forest and hill, in sunshine and storm, we catch the echo of laughter and song. And again, as we fare homewards at dusk, as the mist rises ghostly from the river, and all the life of the village gathers and nestles in the wide-spreading shelter of its memorial trees, with what cheerful bustle and murmur of life they take the day's reward-the evening rice, the old wives' tales, the tapping of frequent pipes, voices of children in the temple courtyard, cries of the wild-fowl overhead, languor and thrill of weary resting limbs, glamour

and peace of the dying day. And then, like fireflies lost in the bamboo-groves, the tiny lights go out, and sleep, "carecharmer Sleep, Son of the sable Night," takes them all under his dark wings and bears them to the dream-strewn shores of the Enchanted Isles. Brothers, sleep well!

"He who hath no jouisance but in enjoying; who shoots not but to hit the mark; who loves not hunting but for the prey ;-it belongs not to him to intermeddle with our schoole."-MONTAIGNE.

"Fortunatus et ille, deos qui novit agrestes."-Georgics.

HE Saucy Jane lay moored to a high bank, under the mulberries, near Haiyee. It had been an ideal day, bright with the "nipping eager air" that sends the blood dancing through the dullest veins like wine. There

had been a sending of woodcock in the morning, fair sport in the copses, and the bag had been pleasantly rounded off with teal, mallard, and snipe from the ponds of the deserted city. But the Major's mind had not yielded to all the soft influences of contentment. His shooting had been a bit off, and Wilden had undoubtedly wiped his eye; also I had observed a difference of opinion between him and Ponto early in the day as to the fitting limit of a spaniel's range; but these are not matters that usually disturb his equal mind. That he was in love, I knew; but with him that

blissful state, varying only in its objects, nearly approaches the chronic, and, being an Irishman, its effect is a "lively and blithe agitation" rather pleasing and advantageous to his friends. Nevertheless, there was evidently a fly somewhere in the amber of his philosophy. He had taken his tub in meditative silence; not a note of the accustomed "Toreador" had come from those usually melodious ablutions, and now he was lying on his back, thoughtfully counting the flies on the ceiling, impervious to the soft seductions of the hour, not to be charmed by comfort of tobacco nor any of the soothing household sights and sounds that mark the close of our houseboat day. Not a word had he spoken for half an hour: truly, a most unfathomable mood.

But it is the unwritten law of the houseboat that we accept and respect each other's varying humours—wherein lies the secret talisman of good fellowship. fellowship. Let questions and explanations plague our work-a-day world; at least when we travel afield we can put them behind us. So, leaving the Major to exorcise the spirit of melancholy, I made my way on deck to smoke the pipe (ay, Calverley, the sweetest) of closing day. Ye gods, how good a thing it is to be alive and hear the whisper of the evening breeze in the reeds, to see the moonlight steal ghostly through the deep shadows of the camphor trees! How sweet and clean the air, fresh blown from the sea; how restfully one's tired limbs stretch themselves, and revel in the balm of laziness! Sitting on the ice-box, the thought of dinner looming pleasantly on the mental horizon, at peace with all the

world, I was in the mood to indite an ode in praise of Idleness, but for the protest of an inner voice which declared all such effort to be sinful. It was at this point that, by a sort of reflex action of the mind, I remembered that the Major had been reading poetry.

I sat and ruminated in the gathering dark. On the bank the dog-coolies were performing the kennel's evening toilet, washing feet and extracting grass-seeds, while they recounted the day's exploits to the cook's "larn-pidgin," busy cleaning and hanging the game. From astern came the clicking of chop-sticks and a confused undertone of grunts and labial noises that indicated the gathering of coolies round the rice-pot; above their heads a coil of blue smoke drifting on the breeze, with savour of frying fish, proclaimed the first activities of Gehazi and the cook. All was well ordered, regular, and quiet, the domestic economy of the Saucy Jane working, as usual, without jolt or creak of its machinery. Truly, the world was a good place.

Suddenly, from close at hand, where the Heart's Desire lay moored, came the voice of Wilden, strident and cheerful, shattering the soft nocturne; proclaiming first, in song, the complaisance of the cosy-corner girl, and thereafter a prosaic desire for cocktails, bridge, and the pleasure of our society. A convivial soul is Wilden, free from sentiment and introspection; gregarious, of Rabelaisian temperament; a blithe pilgrim to whom life sings, in no uncertain tones, the virtues of good cheer and boon companions. I often wonder at the freakishness of those imps of perversity that have led him to consort habitually