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In the heart of that patch of jungle we dropped our blankets. Talk of "rest and a world of leaves"! Those who write to their friends in British Columbia, commiserating with them for living in "the cold dark north," or "cold Canada," or what-not in that strain, know not what they say. The cold, dark north indeed! At North Bend we were in the latitude of the Scilly Isles, and in a far less humid part of the world. Humming-birds were darting among the creepers on the trellis of the hotel with the lawn and sprinkler.

That dingle of ours was colored like the plates in "The Swiss Family Robinson" of my boyhood. We were in a dapple of greens and yellows, and iridescent shade. "Rest and a world of leaves and stealing stream." The stream was not far distant, and thence Slim brought water in a can he found near the track and, hanging our pocket-mirrors on twigs of the trees, we shaved.

Wonderful what a shave will do for one! Refreshed thereafter, I smiled to myself over the fun of it all, and wondered what my good people at home would have thought had they known of that night's travel in the box-car and this open-air hospice, this shaving and titivating in the jingle, pocket-mirror hanging on a twig of a tree.