"This? This is not hot. You ought to be here in the summer time once."

"We supposed that this was summer; it has the ear-marks of it. You could
take it to almost any country and deceive people with it. But if it
isn't summer, what does it lack?"

"It lacks half a year. This is mid-winter."

I had been suffering from colds for several months, and a sudden change
of season, like this, could hardly fail to do me hurt. It brought on
another cold. It is odd, these sudden jumps from season to season. A
fortnight ago we left America in mid-summer, now it is midwinter; about a
week hence we shall arrive in Australia in the spring.

After dinner I found in the billiard-room a resident whom I had known
somewhere else in the world, and presently made some new friends and
drove with them out into the country to visit his Excellency the head of
the State, who was occupying his country residence, to escape the rigors
of the winter weather, I suppose, for it was on breezy high ground and
much more comfortable than the lower regions, where the town is, and
where the winter has full swing, and often sets a person's hair afire
when he takes off his hat to bow. There is a noble and beautiful view of
ocean and islands and castellated peaks from the governor's high-placed
house, and its immediate surroundings lie drowsing in that dreamy repose
and serenity which are the charm of life in the Pacific Islands.

One of the new friends who went out there with me was a large man, and I
had been admiring his size all the way. I was still admiring it as he
stood by the governor on the veranda, talking; then the Fijian butler
stepped out there to announce tea, and dwarfed him. Maybe he did not
quite dwarf him, but at any rate the contrast was quite striking.
Perhaps that dark giant was a king in a condition of political
suspension. I think that in the talk there on the veranda it was said
that in Fiji, as in the Sandwich Islands, native kings and chiefs are of
much grander size and build than the commoners. This man was clothed in
flowing white vestments, and they were just the thing for him; they
comported well with his great stature and his kingly port and dignity.
European clothes would have degraded him and made him commonplace. I
know that, because they do that with everybody that wears them.

It was said that the old-time devotion to chiefs and reverence for their
persons still survive in the native commoner, and in great fo