* * * * * *
A stroll through the village, and a little moralizing beside the scarcely cold embers of the rival inn, where
“Imagination fondly stooped to trace
The parlor splendors of that festive place,
The whitewashed wall, the nicely sanded floor,
The varnish’d clock that clicked behind the door,”
passed the time until Darkness spread her sable robe over all the earth. We sat outside our inn in the fresh air, and listened while the myriad creatures which seem born on every summer night uplifted in joy their stridulous voices, piping the whole chromatic scale with infinite self-satisfaction. Innumerable crickets sent forth what, perhaps, were gratulations on our arrival; a colony of tree-toads asked, in the key of C sharp major, after their relatives in the back country; while the swell bass of the bull-frogs seemed to be, with deep and hearty utterances, thanking heaven that their dwelling-places were beside pastures green in cooling streams. For a while we listened to this concert of liliputians rising higher and higher as Nature hushed to sleep her children of a larger growth. Ere long, the village bell tolled the hour for retiring. I told the landlady to call us betimes, and then my wife and self shut ourselves up in our little room for the night.
Very weariness induced the partner of my joys and sorrows to commit her tender frame to the coarse bedclothes; but before “tired Nature’s sweet restorer, balmy sleep” arrived, and with repose our eyelids closed, an entomological hunt began. First a host of little black bandits found us out, and attacked us right vigorously, skirmishing bravely and as systematically as if they had been trained in the schools of that educator of fleas, Signor Bertolotto, only his students always crawl carefully along and never hop, as we found by experience that our fierce assailants did. After we had disposed of these light cavalry—these F sharps—for a time, and were again endeavoring to compose our minds to sleep, there came a detachment of the B-flat brigade, of aldermanic proportions, pressing slowly on. Again there was a search as for hidden treasures. Faugh! what a time we had, pursuing and capturing, crushing and decapitating, hosts of creatures not to be named in ears polite. Most hideous night, thou wert not sent for slumber! It would almost have been better for us had we been inmates of the hospital for such creatures at Surat, for there we would have been paid for the feast we furnished. Here we had the prospect of paying for our pains and pangs.
I am an ardent entomologist; but I solemnly avow I grew tired that night of my favorite science. ’Twas vain to think of slumber—
Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
nor yet the plan adopted by the Samoan islanders, who place a snake, imprisoned in bamboo, beneath their heads and find the hissing of the reptile highly soporific, could medicine us to that sweet sleep which nature so much needed. At length we arose in despair, donned our apparel, and sat down beside the window to watch for the first bright tints heralding the advent of the glorious king of day.
“Must we pay for such wretched accommodation?” asked my wife, mournfully. I shook my head as I replied:
“I fear me so.[35] We might escape;[36] but I don’t want to have a row about my bill in a dollar house.”