ruit and vegetables in February,
good land! Pickin' berries and pineapples while the Jonesvillians'
fruit wuz snowballs and icesuckles; jest think on't!

Well, Robert Strong thought we had better proceed on to Canton the
next day and we wuz all agreeable to it.

After we all went back to the tarven and I had laid down a spell and
rested, I went out with Arvilly and Tommy for a little walk, Miss
Meechim, and Dorothy, and Robert Strong havin' gone over to Maceo, the
old Portuguese town on the mainland. They wanted to see the place
where Camoens wrote his great poem, "The Lusiad," and where he writ
them heart-breakin' poems to Catarina. Poor creeters! they had to be
separated. King John sent him off from Lisbon, wantin' the girl
himself, so I spoze. Catarina died soon of a broken heart, but Camoens
lived on for thirty years in the body, and is livin' now and will live
on in the Real Life fer quite a spell.

Yes, his memory is jest as fresh now as it ever wuz in them streets he
wandered in durin' his sad exile, while the solid stun his feet trod
on has mouldered and gone to pieces, which shows how much more real
the onseen is than the seen, and how much more indestructible. Iron
pillars and granite columns aginst which his weary head had leaned
oft-times had all mouldered and decayed. But the onseen visions that
Camoens see with his rapt poet's eye wuz jest as fresh and deathless
as when he first writ 'em down. And his memory hanted the old streets,
and went before 'em and over 'em. How much more real than the tropical
birds that wheeled and glittered in the luxuriant tropical foliage,
though they couldn't lay hands on 'em and ketch 'em and bring a few to
me, much as I would liked to have had 'em. But these bein' the real,
as I say, they wuz also with me way over in Hongkong. I thought a
sight on him all the time they wuz gone, and afterwards I thought of
the honor and dignity his noble verse had gin to his country, and how
princely the income they had gin him after they let him return from
his exile. Twenty-one dollars a year! What a premium that wuz upon
poesy; the Muse must have felt giddy to think she wuz prized so high,
and his native land repented of the generosity afterwards and stopped
the twenty-one dollars a year.

But then after his starved and strugglin' life wuz ended his country
acted in the usual way, erected monuments in his honor, and struck off
medals bearin' his liniment. The worth of one medal or one