effect upon the human machine than all the eloquence of reason and
honour. So the printed periods became more sonorous, the magic of the
words more vivid. The purified meaning of the author, the exaltation he
himself must have felt, were realised with a clearer apprehension. But
the very novelty of the emotional undertaking drew me reluctantly from
that which was becoming a lulling musical reverie.

Still, fain to read, but with the niceties of the art embarrassed, I
began to question myself. Whence this pleasant yet provoking refrain? Not
of the sea, for a glassy calm had prevailed all day; not of the rain
which pattered faintly on the roof. This sound phantom that determinedly
beckoned me from my book--whence, and what was it?

Listening attentively and alert, the mystery of it vanished. It was the
commotion, subdued by the distance of three-quarters of a mile, of
thousands of nutmeg pigeons--a blending of thousands of simultaneous
"coo-hoos" with the rustling and beating of wings upon the thin, slack
strings of casuarinas. The swaying and switching of the slender-branched
and ever-sighing trees with the courageous notes of homing birds had
created the curious melody with which my reading had fallen into tune.

And the sound was audible at one spot only. The acoustic properties of
the veranda condensed and concentrated it within a narrow area, beyond
which was silence. Chance had selected this aerial whirlpool for my
reading.

Again taking my ease, the mellow "roaring" of the multitude of gentle
doves commingling with the aeolian blandness of trees swinging under the
weight of the restless birds, became once more an idealistic
accompaniment to the book. I read, or rather declaimed inarticulately, to