read to him. The old man always begged the clergyman to read him the
hymn, "The roseate hues of early dawn." At the tenth request for the
reading of this hymn the clergyman asked him what it was in the lines
that made such an appeal to him. "Ah, sir," answered the old shepherd,
"here I lie, and I know full well that I shall never get up again; but
when you reads me that beautiful 'ymn, I fancies myself on the downs
again at daybreak, and can just see 'Them rows of ewes at early
dawn'!"

Had the old shepherd lived in Bermuda instead of in Sussex, that is a
sight which he would never have seen, for the local grass, though it
appears green enough to the eye, is a coarse growth which crackles
under the feet and contains no nutriment whatever as pasture; so all
cows have to be fed on imported hay, rendering milk very costly. For
the same reason all meat and butter have to be imported, and their
price even in pre-war days was sufficiently staggering. The high cost
of living and the myriads of mosquitoes are the only draw-backs to
life in these Delectable Islands. That no systematic effort to
exterminate mosquitoes has ever been made in Bermuda is to me
incomprehensible, for these mosquitoes are all of the Stegomyia, or
yellow-fever-carrying variety. The Americans have shown, both in the
Canal Zone and in Havana, that with sufficient organisation it is
quite possible to extirpate these dangerous pests, and the Bermudians
could not do better than to follow their example.

Our soldier-gardeners at Government House had their own methods, and
were inclined to attach importance to points considered trivial by
civilians. The men were laying out a new vegetable garden for the
Governor, and I went with the corporal one evening to inspect
progress. The corporal, after glancing at the new-planted rows of