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To be indifferent to any circumstances to be quite thoughtless as to draughts and chills, careless of heat, indifferent to the character of dinners, able to do well on hard, dry bread, capable of sleeping in the open under a rick, or some slight structure of a hurdle, propped on a few sticks and roughly thatched with straw, and to sleep sound as an oak, and wake strong as an oak in the morning-gods, what a glorious life!

Touchett, but which he had now ceased to enjoy. Isabel enjoyed it largely and, handling the reins in a manner which approved itself to the groom as "knowing," was never weary of driving her uncle's capital horses through winding lanes and byways full of the rural incidents she had confidently expected to find; past cottages thatched and timbered, past ale-houses latticed and sanded, past patches of ancient common and glimpses of empty parks, between hedgerows made thick by midsummer.

I rarely make my observations on the conjugal oddities with which the drawing-room is usually full, without recalling vividly a sight which I once enjoyed in early youth: In 1819 I was living in a thatched cottage situated in the bosom of the delightful valley l'Isle-Adam.

It was an honest face, ruddy with wind and sun and thatched with hair which his mislikers called red but his friends golden. The girl seemed to have had her say. She turned wearily aside, and drew the chain between her young lips with a gesture of despair. "Since when have you become Burgundian, Catherine?" the young man asked timidly.

Each dwelling is under the shade of pommeloe, orange, and bamboo. By dint of much peeping, and many pricks which have since inflamed, I saw that the poorer houses were built of unplaned planks or split bamboo, thatched with palm leaves, with deep verandas, furnished with broad matted benches with curious, round bamboo pillows.

The moment her door was shut the other doors began to open, and soon there appeared little groups here and there about a threshold, while a few of the more courageous ventured out upon the square all ready to make for their houses again, however, upon the least sign of movement in the little thatched one.

To resist, to argue the matter like some miserable metaphysician would have been useless. The persistent image was of the old deep road, the green bank on each side, on which stood thatched cottages, whitewashed or of the pale red of old weathered bricks; each with its plot of ground or garden with, in some cases, a few fruit trees.

The warm late September sunshine shed a golden glow upon the thatched roofs of the cottages and made every bright-coloured pot that hung under the verandahs gleam with many-hued and dazzling reflections. It touched the red roof of the little church with an additional coat of glittering crimson and caused the metal cross upon the spire to throw out vivid sparks of light.

That portion runs through the wilderness a mile or more back from the canal, through jungled hills so dense with vegetation one could only make one's way through it with the ubiquitous machete of the native jungle-dweller, except where tiny trails appear that lead to squatters' thatched huts thrown together of tin, dynamite and dry-goods boxes and jungle reeds in little scattered patches of clearing.

It would do you good to look at their hagyard the corn stacks were so nately roped and trimmed, and the walls so well made up, that a bird could scarcely get into it. Their barn and cowhouse, too, and dwelling-house, were all comfortably thatched, and the windies all glazed, with not a broken pane in them.