cal features, there is
something strangely self-condemned in the appearance of these creatures.
Lasting sorrow and penal hopelessness are in no animal form so
suppliantly expressed as in theirs; while the thought of their wonderful
longevity does not fail to enhance the impression.

Nor even at the risk of meriting the charge of absurdly believing in
enchantments, can I restrain the admission that sometimes, even now,
when leaving the crowded city to wander out July and August among the
Adirondack Mountains, far from the influences of towns and
proportionally nigh to the mysterious ones of nature; when at such times
I sit me down in the mossy head of some deep-wooded gorge, surrounded by
prostrate trunks of blasted pines and recall, as in a dream, my other
and far-distant rovings in the baked heart of the charmed isles; and
remember the sudden glimpses of dusky shells, and long languid necks
protruded from the leafless thickets; and again have beheld the
vitreous inland rocks worn down and grooved into deep ruts by ages and
ages of the slow draggings of tortoises in quest of pools of scanty
water; I can hardly resist the feeling that in my time I have indeed
slept upon evilly enchanted ground.

Nay, such is the vividness of my memory, or the magic of my fancy, that
I know not whether I am not the occasional victim of optical delusion
concerning the Gallipagos. For, often in scenes of social merriment, and
especially at revels held by candle-light in old-fashioned mansions, so
that shadows are thrown into the further recesses of an angular and
spacious room, making them put on a look of haunted undergrowth of
lonely woods, I have drawn the attention of my comrades by my fixed gaze
and sudden change of air, as I have seemed to see, slowly emerging from
those imagined solitudes, and heavily crawling along the floor, the
ghost of a gigantic tortoise, with "Memento * * * * *" burning in live
letters upon his back.

* * * * *

SKETCH SECOND.

TWO SIDES TO A TORTOISE.

"Most ugly shapes and horrible aspects,
Such as Dame Nature selfe mote feare to see,
Or shame, that ever should so fowle defects
From her most cunning hand escaped bee;
All dreadfull pourtraicts of deformitee.
No wonder if these do a man appall;
For all that here at home we dreadfull hold
Be but as bugs to fearen babes withall
Compared to the creatures in these isles' entrall

* *