the powers of some musical
instruments--notably those of the violin--but it seems to set a piano's
teeth on edge. Most of the music in vogue there is the same that those
pianos prattled in their innocent infancy; and there is something very
pathetic about it when they go over it now, in their asthmatic second
childhood, dropping a note here and there where a tooth is gone.

We attended evening service at the stately Episcopal church on the hill,
where five or six hundred people, half of them white and the other
half black, according to the usual Bermudian proportions; and all well
dressed--a thing which is also usual in Bermuda and to be confidently
expected. There was good music, which we heard, and doubtless--a good
sermon, but there was a wonderful deal of coughing, and so only the high
parts of the argument carried over it. As we came out, after service, I
overheard one young girl say to another:

"Why, you don't mean to say you pay duty on gloves and laces! I only pay
postage; have them done up and sent in the Boston Advertiser."

There are those that believe that the most difficult thing to create
is a woman who can comprehend that it is wrong to smuggle; and that an
impossible thing to create is a woman who will not smuggle, whether or
no, when she gets a chance. But these may be errors.

We went wandering off toward the country, and were soon far down in
the lonely black depths of a road that was roofed over with the dense
foliage of a double rank of great cedars. There was no sound of any kind
there; it was perfectly still. And it was so dark that one could detect
nothing but somber outlines. We strode farther and farther down this
tunnel, cheering the way with chat.

Presently the chat took this shape: "How insensibly the character of the
people and of a government makes its impress upon a stranger, and gives
him a sense of security or of insecurity without his taking deliberate
thought upon the matter or asking anybody a question! We have been in
this land half a day; we have seen none but honest faces; we have noted
the British flag flying, which means efficient government and good
order; so without inquiry we plunge unarmed and with perfect confidence
into this dismal place, which in almost any other country would swarm
with thugs and garroters--"

'Sh! What was that? Stealthy footsteps! Low voices! We gasp, we close up
together, and wait. A vague shape glides out of the dusk and confronts
us. A voic