The cost of living is measurable by a standard
adjustable to individual taste, wants and perceptions. The expenditure of
a little manual labour supplies the omissions of and compensates for
the undirected impulses which prevail, and the pursuit--not the
profession--leads one to ever-varying scenes, to the contemplation of many
of the moods of unaffected, unadvertised Nature. Ashore, one dallies
luxuriously with time, free from all the restrictions of streets, every
precious moment his very own; afloat in these calm and shallow waters
there is a never-ending panorama of entertainment. Coral gardens--gardens
of the sea nymphs, wherein fancy feigns cool, shy, chaste faces and
pliant forms half-revealed among gently swaying robes; a company of
porpoise, a herd of dugong; turtle, queer and familiar fish, occasionally
the spouting of a great whale, and always the company of swift and
graceful birds. Sometimes the whole expansive ocean is as calm as it can
only be in the tropics and bordered by the Barrier Reef--a shield of
shimmering silver from which the islands stand out as turquoise bosses.
Again, it is of cobalt blue, with changing bands of purple and gleaming
pink, or of grey blue--the reflection of a sky pallid and tremulous with
excess of light.
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