IN IDLE MOMENT



"'Are you not frequently idle?'
'Never, brother. When we are not engaged in our traffic we are
engaged in our relaxations.'"--BORROW.

On the smooth beaches and in the silent bush, where time is not regulated
by formalities or shackled by conventions, there delicious
lapses--fag-ends of the day to be utilised in a dreamy mood which
observes and accepts the happenings of Nature without disturbing the
shyest of her manifestations or permitting 'the-mind to dwell on any but
the vaguest speculations.

Such idle moments are mine. Let these pages tell of their occupation.

As the years pass it is proved that the administration of the affairs of
an island, the settled population of which is limited to three, involves
pleasant though exacting duties. It is a gainful government--not gainful
in the accepted sense, but in all that vitally matters--personal freedom,
absence of irksome regulations remindful of the street, liberty to enjoy
the mood of the moment and to commune with Nature in her most fascinating
aspects. Those who are out of touch with great and dusty events may, by
way of compensation, be the more sensitive to the processes of the
universe, which, though incessantly repeated, are blessed with recurrent
freshness.

The sun rises, travels across a cloudless sky, gleams on a sailless sea,