There are two horses (one a native of the
island) to perform casual heavy work; the boat has a shed into which she
is reluctantly hauled by means of a windlass to spend the rowdy months;
there is a buoy in the bay to which she is greatly attached when she is
not sulking in the shed or coyly submitting to the caresses of the waves.
It may have been anticipated that I would, Thoreau-like, set down in
details and in figures the exact character and cost of every designed
alteration to this scene; but the idea, as soon as it occurred, was
sternly suppressed, for however cheerful a disciple I am of that
philosopher, far be it from me to belittle him by parody.
A good portion of the house represents the work of my own unaccustomed
hands. I have found how laborious an occupation fencing is, and how very
exasperating if barbed wire is used; that the keeping in order of even a
small plantation in which ill-bred and riotous plants grow with the
rapidity of the prophet's gourd, and which if unattended would lapse in a
very brief space of time into the primitive condition of tangled jungle,
involves incessant labour of the most sweatful kind. A work on structural
botany tells me that "the average rate of perspiration in plants has been
estimated as equal to that of seventeen times that of man.
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