You think a
blue sky the perfection of bliss? When you see a white sky, a dome of
colorless crystal, with purple swells of mountain heaving round you, and
a wilderness of golden greens royally languid below, while stretches of
a scarlet blaze, enough to ruin a weak constitution, flaunt from the
rank vines that lace every thicket, and the whole world, and you with
it, seems breaking into blossom,--why, then you know what light is and
can do. The very wind there by day is bright, now faint, now stinging,
and makes a low, wiry music through the loose sprays, as if they were
tense harp-strings. Nothing startles; all is like a grand composition
utterly wrought out. What a blessing it is that the blacks have been
imported there,--their swarthiness is in such consonance!"
"No; the native race was in better consonance. You are so enthusiastic,
it is pity you ever came away."
"Not at all. I didn't know anything about it till I came back."
"But a mere animal or vegetable life is not much. What was ever done in
the tropics?"
"Almost all the world's history,--wasn't it?"
"No, indeed; only the first, most trifling, and barbarian movements.
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