took her in his arms, the child, seeing his mouth so close to hers,
with the kindest intentions in the world, took the sugar-almond from
her own mouth and popped it into the Archbishop's. Never had a Primate
been in a more embarrassing situation! Having both his arms occupied
in holding the child, he could not remove the offending almond with
his fingers. It would be quite superfluous on my part to point out how
highly indecorous it would be for an Archbishop to--shall we say to
expel anything from his mouth--in church; and even after the sugar had
been dissolved, an almond must be crunched before it can be disposed
of, another wholly inadmissible contingency. So the poor Archbishop
had perforce to remain inarticulate; let us only hope that you and I
may never find ourselves in so difficult a situation.

Many people in Jamaica were in 1907 in quite as difficult a situation.
I found the wife of the Chief Justice, an old acquaintance of mine in
the Far East, living in the emptied swimming-bath of what had been her
home. The officers of the West India Regiment at Up Park Camp were all
under canvas on the cricket-ground. The officers' quarters at Up Park
Barracks were exceedingly well designed for the climate, being raised
on arcades. They were shattered, but the wooden shingle roofs had
fallen intact and unbroken, and lay on the ground in pieces about 100
feet long, a most curious spectacle. Students of _Tom Cringle_ will
remember the gruesome description of his dinner at the Mess at Up
Park Camp, during an epidemic of yellow fever, when one officer after
another got up and left the room, pinching the regimental doctor on
the shoulder as he did so, as an intimation that he, too, had been
claimed by the yellow death. The military authorities acted unwisely
in selecting Up Park as a site for barracks. It certainly stands high,
but is shut off from the sea breeze by the hill known as Long
Mountain, and has, in addition, a dangerous swamp to windward of it,