s and truffles. It is an open door to a new
land which does not fail of its promise, a land in which the prosaic,
the ordinary, the everyday have no place, since they have been
shouldered out, dethroned, by a new and competent perspective. The god
of hammocks is unfailingly kind, just, and generous to those who have
found pancakes wanting and have discovered by inspiration, or
what-not, that truffles do not grow in back-yards to be served at
early breakfast by the maid-of-all-work. Which proves, I believe, that
a mere bed may be a block in the path of philosophy, a commonplace,
and that truffles and hammocks--hammocks unquestionably--are twin
doors to the land of romance.

The swayer in hammocks may find amusement and may enrich science by
his record of observations; his memory will be more vivid, his caste
the worthier, for the intimacy with wild things achieved when swinging
between earth and sky, unfettered by mattress or roof.

X

A TROPIC GARDEN

Take an automobile and into it pile a superman, a great evolutionist,
an artist, an ornithologist, a poet, a botanist, a photographer, a
musician, an author, adorable youngsters of fifteen, and a tired
business man, and within half an hour I shall have drawn from them
superlatives of appreciation, each after his own method of emotional
expression--whether a flood of exclamations, or silence. This is no
light boast, for at one time or another, I have done all this, but in
only one place--the Botanical Gardens of Georgetown, British Guiana.
As I hold it sacrilege to think of dying without again seeing the Taj
Mahal, or the Hills from Darjeeling, so something of ethics seems
involved in my soul's necessity of again watching the homing of the
herons in these tropic gardens at evening.

In the busy, unlovely streets of the waterfront of Georgetown, one is
often jostled; in the markets, it is often difficult at times to make
one's way; but in the gardens a solitary laborer grubs among the
roots, a coolie woman swings by with a bundle of grass on her head,
or, in the late afternoon, an occasional motor whirrs past. Mankind
seems almost an interloper, rather than architect and owner of these
wonder-gardens. His presence is due far more often to business, his
transit marked by speed, than the slow walking or loitering which real
appreciation demands.

A guide-book will doubtless give the exact acreage, tell the mileage
of excellent roads, record the date of establis