Then Mrs. Greenwood brought forward as an argument the statement about her own experience which she had made, a short time before, to another audience; whereat the Admiral scratched his head, and grumbled under his breath. He was well aware that if he were to be opposed to his wife and daughter upon any given point, victory would assuredly declare itself for the allies; not because their wills were stronger than his, but because he could not bear to disappoint either of them, so he only said:

"You are in a great hurry to get rid of Kitty. It strikes me that she is well enough as she is."

Mrs. Greenwood set down the teapot in order to throw up her hands. "I in a hurry! Haven't I been telling you all this time that I should be very much disappointed in Gilbert Segrave if he ventured to propose to Kitty before he had some professional income to offer her ?"

"I didn't hear you," observed the Admiral, "but I applaud your sentiments."

"And I'm sure you can't really think," Mrs. Greenwood went on, "that I want to get rid of dear Kitty. Of course I should like to see her happily married. The more so because I don't know that I agree with you in thinking her well enough as she is. I can't help feeling uneasy about all this Sunday-school teaching, and district visiting, and attending of services at St. Michael's."

"She'll get no harm there," said the Admiral confidently. "Young people must have enthusiasms of one kind or another, and I don't call that a bad kind of enthusiasm. Monckton is a first-rate fellow, too."

"Maybe he is; but I believe you only admire him so much because he knows how to sail a boat."

"Not a bit of it! Any fool can learn to sail a boat, but there are precious few men who can preach like Monckton, let me tell you; and fewer still who practise what they preach, as he does. Look at the work he has done! Why, there are some slums on Segrave's property at the east end of the town, where they tell me that the doctor didn't dare to go, a few years ago, without a couple of policemen, and now Kitty can walk through them from end to end, and never hear an uncivil word. If a parson can bring about changes of that sort, hang me if I care what uniform he wears !-and he shall have as many flowers out of my garden as he likes."

"Oh, I suppose so! In fact, I have just

been gathering a whole basketful for him. The end of this will be, Tom, that you will go over to Rome."

"No, I won't go over to Rome; I won't even go to St. Michael's. I shall sit in our own parish church every Sunday morning as long as I live, and I'd put in an appearance in the afternoon, too, only I can't keep awake; and now that they've done away with the square pews, I'm afraid of setting a bad example to the congregation. Here comes young Segrave with Kitty. Confound the fellow! I wonder what he's saying to her. How are you, Gilbert? Had any sport to-day?"

"How do you do, Admiral ?" said Gilbert, stepping in through the open window. "No, I couldn't manage to hit them, somehow. I was telling Miss Greenwood that dancing and late hours have put my eye all wrong; and now she wants me to repeat the dose."

Papa, dear," said Kitty, putting her hands on the Admiral's shoulders and raising her pretty face to his, "don't you think we ought to give a dance?"

"Oh, dear! oh, dear!" groaned the Admiral. "And have the house turned topsyturvy for a week! I thought that kind of thing never began until after Christmas."

"But Christmas is such a long, long way off; and Mr. Segrave says he will have to go to London as soon as the Michaelmas term begins."

"Can't we give a dance without Mr. Segrave?"

"Not very well, because I do so want to have a cotillon, and nobody can lead it as he does. We have been talking it all over, and he knows ever so many new figures."

"Well, well," said the Admiral, who, perhaps, was relieved to hear that the young people had been talking over nothing more serious than a cotillon, "you can have your dance if your mother doesn't object; only, mind, my den isn't to be interfered with."

So the old gentleman, having received a kiss and a promise that he should be put to no more discomfort than was inevitable, proceeded in the plenitude of his good-nature to say

"You might as well stop and dine with us, Gilbert, my boy. Never mind about dressing; and we'll send you home in the dogcart."

From all of which it will be perceived that Admiral Greenwood, though a man of considerable resolution and common sense, was by no means master in his own house.

EM

MERSON says somewhere, in his magnificent way, "We live by our imaginations, by our admiration, our sentiments." Prosaic folk are disposed to add, "by our health." The first thing is to have health, and the second is to keep it, and the third is to protect it. For which protection a winter or spring sojourn in a warm climate may be the surest as well as pleasantest method. Then the question arises, "Where shall we go?" About European resorts it is unnecessary to write a word. Madeira, Algiers, the Nile, Beyrout, are all very familiar places. Bombay is within a three months' furlough, but the Red Sea must be twice traversed, and after Aden there is nothing but the Indian Ocean until you reach India. Australia requires at least four months, and the Equator must be crossed twice, with the sultry doldrums. The Azores are only five days from

Southampton. They are reached from Lisbon. The air is balmy, the accommodation homely, but clean. Charges are moderate. A traveller, however, should bring his own resources with him, and it would be a pity if he could not eat oranges. Those for whom a long ocean voyage has no special terrors may go to Rio, the loveliest harbour in the world, and half a day is sufficient for reaching Petropolis, a lovely and healthy resort in the Organ Mountains, where the Emperor and the diplomatic corps have summer residences, and where there is a capital, though small, hotel. Mendoza, at the foot of the Andes, is said to have a perfect winter climate, but it is a long way off. It is very liable to earthquakes, and to cross the Andes into Chili is about as risky a bit of travelling as can be conceived, though it may seem a shorter way home than re-crossing the Pampas

to Buenos Ayres. Monterey, on the Pacific, an afternoon's railway drive from San Francisco, is the place I long to visit. The climate is delicious, the hotel is described as simply perfect, and South California is perhaps the most fertile and healthy district under the sun. But it means such a long voyage if you go there by sea and the Isthmus of Panama, involving twenty-three days' sail on the Atlantic side, and twenty-one more on the Pacific. To attempt to reach it by land would be to fall out of the moroseness of an English winter into the rigour of a North Atlantic voyage; and a blizzard, as well as the great fatigue of eight days' incessant travelling over the continent, would not be a prudent thing to face. There is Florida, no doubt, but unless you are altogether possessed with the Englishman's traditional desire to "go and kill something," it soon palls on one. All things considered, for variety, interest, economy, and material comfort, only premising that there is no constitutional objection to heat, and that the stay in the tropics is not too much prolonged, I can recommend nothing better than a voyage to the West Indies. The Royal Mail steamers (and I have travelled more than 13,000 miles in them) yield to none that cross the ocean for punctuality, safety or comfort. After the Azores the ship is in summer, and remains there. Barbados is the first place reached, and is the convenient centre of the intercolonial traffic. The steamers into which you are transhipped from the ocean boats are, though smaller, in some respects even more comfort able, and the Esk and Eden are as cosy as a ship can be. If possible, Demerara with beautiful George Town (the queen of West Indian towns) should be visited, and a trip taken up the Essequibo River. This means the inside of a fortnight from Barbados and back there. Another fortnight will be well spent in the boat going to St. Vincent, Grenada, Trinidad, and La Guayra for Caraccas. This expedition also consumes the inside of a fortnight, coming back to Barbados, and these southern localities are best visited first, for they are the hottest. Another expedition should be made to the Windward Islands, including St. Lucia, Martinique, Guadaloupe, Dominique, Antigua and St. Thomas. The steamer (you may be able to make all these expeditions in the same ship) will bring you back to Barbados (also within the fortnight); there you will meet the outocean mail for Jamaica, which you will reach in about four days, where a stay of a month or six weeks should if possible be arranged.

If there is leisure, and sufficient venturesomeness, a mail steamer will take you on to Havana (once a month) and Vera Cruz, from which a railroad takes you up in fourteen hours to the city of Mexico, through some of the finest scenery in the world. Puebla should also be visited-in some respects as interesting, and both cleaner and healthier, than Mexico; and from Vera Cruz there is frequent communication with New Orleans, between which and Liverpool there are steamers every week. One caution, however, let me presume to offer. Let no one, without urgent cause, go to Colon. There is no scenery worth looking at. Independently of the yellow fever, which rages there in the summer, the digging of the canal has developed a deadly malarious fever, which, if it does not at once kill you, clings to you for your life. The canal works, which will require at least twenty-five millions sterling more to complete them, have as yet made no sufficient progress to interest ordinary travellers. There are indeed huge masses of machinery lying about and spoiling, brought out in reckless haste years before they could be put to use, but even these are covered up by the tropical vegetation. There are admirable hospitals, which, alas! were not of much use to the five thousand victims of fever who are said to have died there last year, for the sickness kills so quickly that it is often not thought worth while to take them there only to die. Until the Chagres River is embanked and diverted, the real difficulty of the scheme is not even touched. But this is not yet begun. Then it is said to be as wicked a place as it is unhealthy. The captain of a ship remarked to me the other day, "If you want to see hell upon earth go to Colon." A visitor should settle with himself what the use is of seeing hell upon earth if he has no particular opportunity of making it heaven. Perhaps a place where men die like flies, and live like devils, is hardly the spot for sensible folk to visit without good cause.

May I add one or two sentences of caution to those who may take this trip for the sake of health? Where there is sensitiveness to change of temperature (and a hot climate does not of necessity diminish this) it may be well to avoid night air, and not to remain on deck after sunset. (The only fault we found with our friends, the Royal Mail Steam Co., was their barbarous dinner hour of five!) Warm clothing must not be dropped too hastily going south, nor deferred too long returning north. It is better to anticipate the cold than to be compelled to

months of the tropics as much as they care for. The change of temperature going north may be made quite gradual, and for this reason it is safer to return from Jamaica in the early spring by way of Barbados than by New York.

The sketches which follow-only sketches, though pains have been taken to make them faithful and exact-make no sort of claim to pronounce dogmatically on any of the difficult problems which it was unavoidable occasionally to notice, though they do pretend to be a kind of filter for much valuable information, and perhaps some useful reflections, which manifold conversation with all

sorts of people threw in the writer's way. His chief aim has been to try to persuade his readers (a few of whom might possibly be embarrassed at being invited to pass an examination off-hand in the geography of the West Indies) to inform themselves, of course in a much more solid and complete fashion, of the importance and value-yes, and substantial progress of these imperfectly prized jewels of the British Crown. Quite the best result would be, if some of those who have leisure on their hands and the world to choose from to travel over, would be at the pains to go there themselves, to appreciate with their own eyes the loveliness of these

homes of the sun, and to enjoy the frank and delightful kindness of their fellow-subjects who inhabit them. They would most certainly find themselves recompensed for the direction which an insignificant pen has given to their impulses of travel, and they would be welcome, ten times over, to forget, disregard, or reject any conclusions they may find here in exchange for the sounder opinions they will have taken the trouble to make for them selves.

I.-BARBADOS.

Barbados is a cheerful, healthy, and highly cultivated island, entirely the creation of coral insects, somewhat of the size of the Isle of Wight, populated to an extent relatively approximating that of China, and within twelve days of Plymouth. It claims to be, with St. Christopher, the first colony founded by Great Britain in the South of America, having been settled in 1625, and has ever since been attached to the British Crown. Here the sugar cane was first planted on British soil, and here many of the loyalists during the time of the Great Rebellion found an asylum. It is the fashion, I hardly know why, to make fun of the Barbadians for

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being so fond and proud of Barbados. Even as an abstract question of expediency, it is surely far better for all concerned that those who live in a place and make its prosperity should really believe in it. Moreover, Barbados is not the only place which much respects itself. Some years ago I visited St. John's, Newfoundland, where for nine months of the year the climate may without offence be thought a little morose, and the opportunities of communication with the outer world somewhat infrequent. Prepared, if necessary, to give an ample expression of sympathy to the spirited and cheerful folk who live there for having to live there, I discovered, happily in time, that the persons felt by the inhabitants to be really in need of sympathy were those who did not live. there, and I reserved my sympathy until it was wanted. Distinctly I maintain, as one who is glad to express how grateful he is to Barbados for its salubrious breezes, and to the Barbadians for their delightful kindness, that if the Barbados folk have a good deal of self-respect, they have a perfect right to what they really deserve.

Barbados, though not to be called beautiful in the sense that Jamaica, or Dominique,