charmed circle you are at home. The home air is impregnated with hospitality, with easy courtesy and a gracious freedom of action intimating in every movement a generous welcome and an assurance that the house is yours.

The road through the estate from the highway to the residence was lined with cork trees, pollard oaks and chestnuts, whose branches met and intertwined, forming a shaded avenue of refreshing coolness. Breaking the line of continuity were boxedged paths leading to beds filled with flowering plants of the older fashion, asters, balsams, heliotropes and scented verbenas. Here also were beds of geraniums, blue and scarlet salvias, fuchsias of the more primitive kind, and yerba-santa, whose delicate blossoms stood star-white against the foliage. An electric button at the gate lodge notified the palace inmates of the approach of visitors, and when I stepped down from the carriage I was met by His Excellency who welcomed me with the true, courteous cordiality of the Portuguese gentleman.

After luncheon, the marquis retired to his siesta hammock, commending me to the attention of his son and daughter. The young count was educated at Ushaw, England, spoke English and French fluently and had travelled in North and South America. With him I rambled through the family demesne and forest. Our conversation drifted into the origin of languages and their structural differences. "When I was travelling in North America," said the count, "I visited a set

tlement of Free-Lovers in Western New York and since then I never think of the spelling and pronunciation of your awful language without also thinking of the Free-Lovers' community." "Where does the affinity or likeness enter?" I asked. “In that there is no marriage between them, there is no law or rule governing your spelling and pronunciation, no legal bond holding them together and as a result your language is anarchical and confusing. Then take your colloquial phrases, particularly in America, how is it possible for any educated foreigner to understand them? To give you an example. The evening after the presentation of my letters to a gentleman in Chicago I was taking a bath, when a bell boy knocked on the door, pushed an envelope under it and shouted loud enough to be heard in every room on the corridor, 'A letter for you, sir.' Well, I hastily threw on my bath robe, thinking the matter was of immediate importance, opened the envelope and read, 'My Dear Count, If you have nothing on to-night will you dine with me and a few friends-say nine o'clock. Don't dress but come just as you are.

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Many years ago the father of the present Marquis do Conto laid out the splendid grounds of the estate. He was a great traveller and enriched his princely property with exotics from Asia, South America and Africa. Here were conifers from the highlands of Brazil and slopes of the Himalayas, and orchids from the forests of Guiana. The count pointed out to me loquat trees from China, large and shady

as fig trees, with aromatic blossoms, gum trees and eucalypti or Australian fever trees whose slender polished branches bore long drooping leaves with a mellow splendour of russet, red and yellow. We strayed into a side path and at once I was conscious of a heavy, vaporous odour. "These are the manchineel trees," said the count, "and if you fall asleep under them you'll never wake." Here also were bella-sombras, huge forest trees from Brazil and flowering magnolias from Central America, forest giants throwing out a white scented flower; camelias from Japan, as large as apple trees; and oleanders or South Sea rose trees, beautiful and odorous. Scattered among the imperial beauties were pomegranates, tall papaws and golden fruited species of the citrus, from the gigantic shaddock to the diminutive lime.

In the very frensy and wantonness of unchecked luxuriance grew orange trees, spice trees, okra and wild aloes. I stretched out my hand to a fruit of fairest appearance. "Don't touch it," spoke the count, "it's nux vomica." One must be careful here, I thought, not only of his language but even of his eating. We crossed a rustic bridge spanning a rio, or small river, fed from a mountain stream that fell and tumbled in cascades over volcanic boulders which bore no traces on their surface of glacial action. We returned to the house by a tufa road whose edges were rich in rose geraniums, white jessamines, chrysanthemums and great bushes of the yellow-flowered madre silva and the saffron