were taken at once to the office of the Listin Diario, whose editor was the brother of Señor P—— A——. He and our Spanish Student had, to them, an interesting conversation about the political situation in Santo Domingo and in Venezuela; and after having promised to dine with us on the boat at six o’clock, we continued our walk in and about and all around, until, much to our surprise, we were taken into a cool, big courtyard, up a wide flight of worn stone steps into the señor’s home. There we met his wife and children, listened to beautiful native dances sympathetically played on the piano by the señor; we rocked in the ever-present Vienna bent-wood chair, talked to the parrot, played with the baby, and drank cocoanut milk from the green cocoanut, and lived to drink from many more. The cocoanut, when used for milk by these Southern people, is cut quite green, before the solid meat has formed and when all is liquid within, and is said to be most healthful. Of our party, the adventurous man and children liked it very much, but the cautious woman a very little. Then we made our adieux, not without the promise, however, that the señor would meet us at three o’clock for the trip up the Ozama River in the ship’s boats.
All day the clouds were reeling heavily in bulky, black heaps, now and then dropping down upon our innocent heads torrents of spattering rain. But we were not to be discomfited by a rain-shower, for were we not prepared? We left the ship with but one umbrella, the white one with the green lining, but as we bade the señor “Adios,” a sudden shower called forth his best silk umbrella. He was insistent, and there was nothing to do but for Daddy to tuck Sister under his wing, accepting the señor’s offer, and for Little Blue Ribbons to trot along by my side, under the Haïtien umbrella. And the green lining proved fast green; it did not run, not a particle!
By three o’clock, Domingo City was a veritable Port Tarascon, and it seemed that Daudet must have been here before he wrote of his poor drenched French émigrés. The rain still fell. It ran down the streets anywhere it pleased; it dripped off the ruined roof of Diego’s Palace; it scampered down the awning of the German Legation; it stood in little pools on the terrace overlooking the river; it trickled down the face of the timeless old sun-dial, and made the long seams on its face dark and wet, as if from tears.
What bliss if we could only have set our watches by the hour told on the Dominican sun-dial! But there was no sun and consequently no time.
I have an inspiration! It has just come to me. Now my course is plain; now I know what I shall do with the little girls. I have often longed to obliterate for them the thought of time. I have wanted them to grow into a feeling of possession of all the time there ever can be—countless ages and ages of time, with never a shadow of hurry lurking about; with never a doubt but that the days will be long enough in which to live their fullest measure of happiness. I shall invoke the aid of the gods, in whose arms rests so peacefully this “Island of the Blest,” and they shall build for me an enchanted palace somewhere—perhaps not just here, but somewhere. I think I shall leave that to the little girls, but it shall be an enchanted palace, all overgrown with sweetbrier and moss, and roundabout shall be a garden—a dear garden, with violets and lilies and arbutus and anemones—and then the trees—there shall be no end of them!—maple and ash, and slender birch and elm, and linden and—but it seems to me I hear you wondering that we should leave out the palms and the breadfruit and banana and citron. I know it does not seem just as it should be, but I am afraid, if we had the palms and the breadfruit, we’d never feel really at home in our palace, and, of course, we must feel at home even in an enchanted palace. We could have two palaces if we wanted to, and have the palms in the company palace, and the cool, sweet maples we could have for our very own. Yes, that is it! That’s what we’ll do!
In the midst of the garden, we will have a Dominican sun-dial, an exact reproduction of this one. I shall make a sketch of it before we move a step further, and it shall he chipped and worn and sun-baked and tear-stained, and it shall look centuries old. Then there must be a Dominican sky; half-sun and half-shade. And then, don’t you see, the little girls will never know the time at all—only just as the clouds run off for a frolic. And I shall arrange an indefinite supply of such weather, and that’s just where we’ll all live. Yes—Daddy and all the dear ones, and it will be such a relief not to be obliged to wind our watches.
“Mother!” said Sister, coming up back of me and peeping under the white umbrella which Little Blue Ribbons was holding resolutely over my head while I sketched; “Mother! what is it you’re drawing?”
“Do you need to ask? Can’t you see it’s the sun-dial?”
“Oh! I thought it was the boy out there in the rain.”
IV.
What can the señor do without his best umbrella? Will he take the black umbrella of his wife’s aunt? No, he will not take the black umbrella of his wife’s aunt, dear Mr. Otto, he has taken the umbrella of his wife’s sister, we will say, to adhere to tradition; but, to tell the truth, I could never say whose umbrella the señor borrowed, but when he appeared he was really so beaming under the dark covering over him, that I quite forgot to ask him whose umbrella it was.
Ah! what would the señor think if he should ever read these words? Would he forswear the friendship? We should sincerely beg forgiveness, for we would sooner never see the walls of Domingo again than to lose the señor’s good-will.
The excursion up the Ozama was a world of delight from beginning to end. The Ozama is one of God’s most perfect little rivers, deep and rather narrow, winding through an enchanting country. The shore is outlined for miles by never-ending mangroves, and on the higher upper banks are the breadfruit, and palms, and a world of unknown trees and fruits. Had there been no palms, no breadfruit or mangroves, it would have been enough joy to me to know that up this self-same river in centuries long since dead, there had swept the doughty keels of Columbus’s crazy little ships. But the Spanish Student was not so easily satisfied; he wanted to know things; how much mahogany and ebony and lignum vitæ was gotten from the outlaying country, and what sort of dyewoods they exported. The señor gave much valuable information, but not much more than the natives themselves, who came gliding down the stream in dugouts, having in tow one or two or three mahogany logs. Who says that all the true Santo Domingo mahogany was cut generations ago? There was a constant and silent passing of these dark craft, for the most part with but a single occupant. Sometimes a woman in the bow, half-buried by a cargo of plantains, bending over a pot of some sort, would be cooking on an improvised camp-fire built on earth above the plantains; and thus busy—one at the fire, the other at the paddle—she and her black mate would slip along out of sight under the dark mysterious shadows of the mangroves, closely hugging the shore.
Not far from the city, the señor pointed to a mighty tree, one of the most gigantic of the tropics, a ceiba, to which it is said Columbus made fast his ships. There was no reason to doubt the statement, and, besides, it is so much pleasanter to believe such natural things than to be for ever doubting. And why should not Columbus have made his ships thus fast? The ceiba looked a thousand years old. Who knows but that it is even older?
A little way down the stream and closer to the city, there was a spring of sweet cool
