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Shipboard Electrical
Power Systems
Shipboard Electrical
Power Systems
Second Edition

Mukund R. Patel
Second edition published 2022
by CRC Press
6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300, Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742

and by CRC Press

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

© 2022 Mukund R. Patel

First edition published by CRC Press 2011

CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

Reasonable efforts have been made to publish reliable data and information, but the author and pub-
lisher cannot assume responsibility for the validity of all materials or the consequences of their use.
The authors and publishers have attempted to trace the copyright holders of all material reproduced in
this publication and apologize to copyright holders if permission to publish in this form has not been
obtained. If any copyright material has not been acknowledged please write and let us know so we may
rectify in any future reprint.

Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Law, no part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced,
transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or here-
after invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or
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or contact the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923,
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are
used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

ISBN: [9780367430351] (hbk)

ISBN: [9781032043357] (pbk)
ISBN: [9781003191513] (ebk)

Typeset in Times
by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
 Dedication

to …
the young sailor and the sea.
Contents
Preface...................................................................................................................... xv
Acronyms and Abbreviations.................................................................................xvii
Acknowledgments....................................................................................................xxi
About the Author.................................................................................................. xxiii
Introduction.............................................................................................................xxv

Chapter 1 AC Power Fundamentals....................................................................... 1

1.1 Current Voltage Power and Energy............................................1
1.2 Alternating Current....................................................................2
1.2.1 RMS Value and Average Power.................................... 3
1.2.2 Polarity Marking in AC.................................................4
1.3 Ac Phasor.................................................................................... 5
1.3.1 Operator j for 90° Phase Shift.......................................7
1.3.2 Three Ways of Writing Phasors.................................... 8
1.3.3 Phasor Form Conversion...............................................8
1.4 Phasor Algebra Review.............................................................. 9
1.5 Single-Phase Ac Power Circuit................................................. 12
1.5.1 Series R-L-C Circuit.................................................... 13
1.5.2 Impedance Triangle..................................................... 17
1.5.3 Circuit Laws and Theorems........................................ 18
1.6 Ac Power in Complex Form..................................................... 19
1.7 Reactive Power.........................................................................24
1.8 Three-Phase Ac Power System.................................................24
1.8.1 Balanced y- and Δ-Connected systems.......................25
1.8.2 Y-Δ Equivalent Impedance Conversion.......................28
Further Reading...................................................................................34

Chapter 2 Shipboard Power System Architectures.............................................. 35

2.1 Types of Ship Drives................................................................ 35
2.2 Electrical Design Tasks............................................................ 36
2.3 Electrical Load Analysis.......................................................... 36
2.3.1 Load Factor or Service Factor..................................... 37
2.3.2 Load Table Compilation.............................................. 38
2.4 Power System Configurations................................................... 41
2.4.1 Basic Conventional Ship............................................. 41
2.4.2 Large Cargo Ship........................................................ 42
2.4.3 Large Cruise Ship........................................................ 43
2.4.4 Ring Bus in Navy Ship................................................ 45
2.4.5 ABS-R2 Redundancy Class of Ship............................46
2.4.6 ABS-R2S Redundancy with Separation.....................46

vii
viii Contents

2.4.7ABS-R2S+ with Two-Winding Propulsion

Motors.........................................................................46
2.4.8 Clean Power Bus for Harmonic-Sensitive
Loads........................................................................... 48
2.4.9 Emergency Generator Engine Starting
System......................................................................... 49
2.5 Cold-Ironing/Shore Power........................................................ 49
2.6 Efficiency and Reliability of Chain.......................................... 50
2.7 Shipboard Circuit Designation................................................. 51
2.8 Ship Simulator.......................................................................... 51
2.9 Systems of Units....................................................................... 52
Further Reading................................................................................... 54

Chapter 3 Common Aspects of Power Equipment.............................................. 55

3.1 Faraday’s Law and Coil Voltage Equation............................... 55
3.2 Mechanical Force and Torque.................................................. 57
3.3 Electrical Equivalent of Newton’s Third Law.......................... 58
3.4 Power Losses in Electrical Machine........................................ 59
3.5 Maximum Efficiency Operating Point.....................................60
3.6 Thevenin Equivalent Source Model......................................... 62
3.7 Voltage Drop and Regulation...................................................64
3.8 Load Sharing Among Sources................................................. 67
3.8.1 Static Sources in Parallel............................................. 67
3.8.2 Load Adjustment......................................................... 69
3.9 Power Rating of Equipment...................................................... 70
3.9.1 Temperature Rise under Load..................................... 71
3.9.2 Service Life under Overload....................................... 71
3.10 Temperature Effect on Resistance............................................ 72
Further Reading................................................................................... 76

Chapter 4 AC Generator...................................................................................... 77
4.1 Terminal Performance.............................................................. 77
4.2 Electrical Model....................................................................... 79
4.3 Electrical Power Output...........................................................80
4.3.1 Field Excitation Effect................................................. 83
4.3.2 Power Capability Limits.............................................. 85
4.3.3 Round and Salient Pole Rotors.................................... 85
4.4 Transient Stability Limit........................................................... 87
4.5 Equal Area Criteria of Transient Stability...............................90
4.6 Speed and Frequency Regulations........................................... 93
4.7 Load Sharing Among Ac Generators....................................... 95
4.8 Isosynchronous Generator........................................................96
4.9 Excitation Methods...................................................................99
4.10 Short Circuit Ratio.................................................................. 100
Contents ix

4.11 Automatic Voltage Regulator................................................. 101

Further Reading................................................................................. 105

Chapter 5 AC and DC Motors............................................................................ 107

5.1 Induction Motor...................................................................... 107
5.1.1 Performance Characteristics..................................... 111
5.1.2 Starting Inrush kVA Code......................................... 116
5.1.3 Torque-Speed Characteristic Matching.................... 117
5.1.4 Motor Control Center................................................ 119
5.1.5 Performance at Different Frequency
and Voltage................................................................ 120
5.2 Synchronous Motor................................................................ 121
5.3 Motor Hp and Line Current.................................................... 125
5.4 Dual-use Motors..................................................................... 126
5.5 Unbalanced Voltage Effect..................................................... 128
5.6 Dc Motor................................................................................ 131
5.7 Universal (Series) Motor AC or DC....................................... 133
5.8 Special Motors for Ship Propulsion....................................... 134
5.9 Torque Versus Speed Comparison.......................................... 134
Further Reading................................................................................. 137

Chapter 6 Transformer....................................................................................... 139

6.1 Transformer Categories.......................................................... 140
6.2 Types of Transformers............................................................ 142
6.3 Selection of kVA Rating. . ....................................................... 143
6.4 Transformer Cooling Classes................................................. 145
6.5 Three-Phase Transformer Connections.................................. 146
6.6 Full-Δ and Open-Δ Connections............................................. 147
6.7 Magnetizing Inrush Current................................................... 149
6.8 Single-Line Diagram Model................................................... 149
6.9 Three-Winding Transformer.................................................. 152
6.10 Percent and Per Unit Systems................................................. 154
6.11 Equivalent Impedance at Different Voltage........................... 157
6.12 Continuous Equivalent Circuit Through Transformer........... 159
6.13 Influence of Transformer Impedance..................................... 161
Further Reading................................................................................. 165

Chapter 7 Power Cable....................................................................................... 167

7.1 Conductor Gage...................................................................... 167
7.2 Cable Insulation...................................................................... 169
7.3 Conductor Ampacity.............................................................. 171
7.4 Cable Electrical Model........................................................... 174
7.5 Skin and Proximity Effects.................................................... 176
x Contents

7.6 Cable Design........................................................................... 178

7.7 Marine and Special Cables..................................................... 180
7.8 Cable Routing and Installation............................................... 187
Further Reading................................................................................. 189

Chapter 8 Power Distribution............................................................................. 191

8.1 Typical Distribution Scheme.................................................. 191
8.2 Grounded and Ungrounded Systems...................................... 193
8.3 Ground Fault Detection Schemes........................................... 196
8.4 Distribution Feeder Voltage Drop.......................................... 197
8.4.1 Voltage Drop During Motor Starting........................ 198
8.4.2 Voltage Boost by Capacitors..................................... 198
8.4.3 System Voltage Drop Analysis..................................200
8.5 Bus Bars Electrical Parameters..............................................202
8.6 High-Frequency Distribution................................................. 203
8.7 Switchboard and Switchgear..................................................206
8.7.1 Automatic Bus Transfer.............................................208
8.7.2 Disconnect Switch.....................................................208
Further Reading................................................................................. 211

Chapter 9 Fault Current Analysis...................................................................... 213

9.1 Types and Frequency of Faults............................................... 213
9.2 Fault Analysis Model.............................................................. 213
9.3 Asymmetrical Fault Transient................................................ 215
9.3.1 Simple Physical Explanation..................................... 216
9.3.2 Rigorous Mathematical Analysis.............................. 218
9.4 Fault Current Offset Factor.................................................... 218
9.5 Fault Current Magnitude........................................................ 219
9.5.1 Symmetrical Fault Current........................................ 220
9.5.2 Asymmetrical Fault Current..................................... 221
9.5.3 Transient and Subtransient Reactance....................... 223
9.5.4 Generator Terminal Fault Current............................. 229
9.5.5 Transformer Terminal Fault Current......................... 229
9.6 Motor Contribution to Fault Current...................................... 230
9.7 Current Limiting Series Reactor............................................ 232
9.8 Unsymmetrical Faults............................................................ 233
9.9 Circuit Breaker Selection Simplified...................................... 234
Further Reading................................................................................. 238

Chapter 10 System Protection.............................................................................. 239

10.1 Fuse.........................................................................................240
10.1.1 Fuse Selection............................................................240
10.1.2 Types of Fuse............................................................. 242
10.2 Overload Protection................................................................ 245
Contents xi

10.3 Electromechanical Relay........................................................ 245

10.4 Circuit Breaker.......................................................................248
10.4.1 Types of Circuit Breaker........................................... 250
10.4.2 Circuit Breaker Selection.......................................... 254
10.5 Differential Protection of Generator...................................... 256
10.6 Differential Protection of Bus and Feeders............................ 257
10.7 Ground Fault Current Interrupter........................................... 257
10.8 Transformer Protection........................................................... 258
10.9 Motor Branch Circuit Protection............................................ 259
10.10 Lightning and Switching Voltage Protection.........................260
10.11 Surge Protection for Small Sensitive Loads........................... 265
10.12 Protection Coordination.........................................................266
10.13 Health Monitoring..................................................................266
10.14 ARC Flash Analysis............................................................... 267
Further Reading................................................................................. 271

Chapter 11 Economic Use of Power.................................................................... 273

11.1 Economic Analysis................................................................. 273
11.1.1 Cash Flow with Borrowed Capital............................ 273
11.1.2 Payback of Self-Financed Capital............................. 274
11.2 Power Loss Capitalization...................................................... 276
11.3 High Efficiency Motor............................................................ 278
11.4 Power Factor Improvement..................................................... 281
11.4.1 Capacitor Size Determination................................... 285
11.4.2 Parallel Resonance with Source................................ 288
11.4.3 Safety with Capacitors.............................................. 288
11.4.4 Difference between PF and Efficiency...................... 289
11.5 Energy Storage During Night................................................. 290
11.6 Variable Speed Motor Drives AC and DC............................. 291
11.7 Regenerative Braking............................................................. 291
11.7.1 Induction Motor Torque versus Speed Curve............ 293
11.7.2 Induction Motor Braking........................................... 294
11.7.3 DC Motor Braking.................................................... 297
11.7.4 New York and Oslo Metro Trains............................. 298
Further Reading................................................................................. 303

Chapter 12 Electrochemical Battery.................................................................... 305

12.1 Major Rechargeable Batteries................................................307
12.1.1 Lead Acid..................................................................307
12.1.2 Nickel Cadmium.......................................................308
12.1.3 Nickel Metal Hydride................................................309
12.1.4 Lithium Ion................................................................309
12.1.5 Lithium Polymer........................................................ 310
12.1.6 Sodium Battery......................................................... 310
xii Contents

12.2 Electrical Circuit Model......................................................... 310

12.3 Performance Characteristics.................................................. 311
12.3.1 Charge/Discharge Voltages....................................... 312
12.3.2 c/d Ratio (Charge Efficiency).................................... 312
12.3.3 Round Trip Energy Efficiency................................... 312
12.3.4 Self-Discharge and Trickle-Charge........................... 314
12.3.5 Memory Effect in NiCd............................................. 314
12.3.6 Temperature Effects.................................................. 315
12.4 Battery Life............................................................................. 315
12.5 Battery Types Compared........................................................ 317
12.6 More on the Lead-Acid Battery.............................................. 318
12.7 Battery Design Process.......................................................... 318
12.8 Safety And Environment........................................................ 321
Further Reading................................................................................. 324

Chapter 13 Electric Propulsion............................................................................ 325

13.1 State of Electric Propulsion.................................................... 325
13.2 Types of Electric Propulsion Drive........................................ 326
13.2.1 Azimuth Z-drive........................................................ 326
13.2.2 Azimuth Pod-Drive................................................... 326
13.3 Propulsion Power System Configurations.............................. 329
13.3.1 Separate Electrical Propulsion Power....................... 329
13.3.2 Integrated Electric Propulsion Power........................ 329
13.4 Advantages of Electric Propulsion......................................... 330
13.4.1 Advantages to Cruise and Navy Ships...................... 330
13.4.2 Special Advantages to Navy Ships............................ 332
13.5 AC Vs. DC Power Option....................................................... 334
13.6 Optimum Voltage Level......................................................... 335
13.7 Propulsion Power Requirement.............................................. 336
13.8 Ship Speed vs. Fuel Consumption.......................................... 336
13.9 Hybrid Propulsion................................................................... 337
13.9.1 Hybrid Tug Boat........................................................ 338
13.9.2 Hybrid Ferry..............................................................340
Further Reading................................................................................. 343

Chapter 14 Ship Emission Regulations and Clean Power

Technologies...................................................................................... 345
14.1 Overview of Ship Emissions.................................................. 345
14.2 Key Marine Air Pollutants.....................................................346
14.3 Marine Emission Regulations................................................ 347
14.4 Means of Emission Reduction................................................ 349
14.4.1 Low Sulfur Fuel Switching....................................... 349
14.4.2 Speed Reduction (Slow Steaming)............................ 350
14.4.3 Using Shore power at Port (Cold Ironing)................. 350
Contents xiii

14.4.4 Using Liquified Natural Gas (LNG)......................... 351

14.4.5 Using Scrubbers........................................................ 351
14.5 Clean Power Technologies...................................................... 351
14.5.1 Fuel Cell Power......................................................... 352
14.5.1.1 Electrochemistry........................................ 352
14.5.1.2 Electrical Performance.............................. 354
14.5.1.3 Types of Fuel Cell...................................... 354
14.5.1.4 Fuel Cells for Navy and Military Use....... 357
14.5.1.5 Fuel Cell in Merchant Ships...................... 358
14.5.2 Lithium-Ion Batteries................................................ 358
14.5.3 Solar Photovoltaics.................................................... 362
14.5.4 Wind Power............................................................... 367
Further Reading................................................................................. 370

Chapter 15 Marine Industry Standards................................................................ 371

15.1 Standard-Issuing Organizations............................................. 371
15.2 Classification Societies........................................................... 372
15.3 Ieee Standard-45..................................................................... 373
15.4 Code of Federal Regulations.................................................. 379
15.5 Military-Std-1399................................................................... 379
Further Reading................................................................................. 381

Appendix A: Symmetrical Components............................................................. 383

Appendix B: Operating Ships Power System Data Example............................ 391
Index....................................................................................................................... 395
Another random document with
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The crow's-
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and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
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you are located before using this eBook.

Title: The crow's-nest

Author: Sara Jeannette Duncan

Release date: May 9, 2024 [eBook #73588]

Language: English

Original publication: Dodd, Mead and Company: New York

Credits: D A Alexander, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CROW'S-

NEST ***
The Crow’s-Nest
 The Crow’s-Nest
By
Mrs. Everard Cotes
(Sara Jeannette Duncan)

Author of “An American Girl in London,”

“A Social Departure,” etc.

New York
Dodd, Mead and Company
1901
 Copyright, 1901, by
Dodd, Mead and Company

UNIVERSITY PRESS · JOHN WILSON

AND SON · CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.
The Crow’s-Nest
 Chapter I
THERE is an attraction about carpets and curtains, chairs and sofas,
and the mantelpiece which is hard to explain, and harder to resist. I
feel it in all its insidious power this morning as I am bidding them
farewell for a considerable time; I would not have believed that a
venerable Axminster and an arm-chair on three casters could absorb
and hold so much affection; verily I think, standing in the door, it
was these things that made Lot’s wife turn her unlucky head. Dear
me, how they enter in, how they grow to be part of us, these
objects of ordinary use and comfort that we place within the four
walls of the little shelters we build for ourselves on the fickle round
o’ the world! I have gone back, I have sat down, I will not be
deprived of them; they are necessary to the courage with which
every one must face life. I will consider nothing without a cushion,
on the hither side of the window, braced by dear familiar
bookshelves, and the fender. And Tiglath-Pileser has come, and has
quoted certain documents, and has used gentle propulsive force,
and behold, because I am a person whose contumacy cannot
endure, the door is shut, and I am on the outside disconsolate.
I would not have more sympathy than I can afterwards sustain; I
am only banished to the garden. But the banishment is so definite,
so permanent! Its terms are plain to my unwilling glance, a long
cane deck chair anchored under a tree. Overhead the sky, on the
four sides the sky, without a pattern, full of wind and nothing.
Abroad the landscape, consisting entirely of large mountains; about,
the garden. I never regarded a garden with more disfavour. Here I
am to remain—but to remain! The word expands, you will find, as
you look into it. Man, and especially woman, is a restless being,
made to live in houses roaming from room to room, and always
staying for the shortest time moreover, if you notice, in the one
which is called the garden. The subtle and gratifying law of
arrangement that makes the drawing-room the only proper place for
afternoon tea operates all through. The convenience of one
apartment, the quiet of another, the decoration of another regularly
appeal in turn, and there is always one’s beloved bed, for retirement
when the world is too much with one. All this I am compelled to
resign for a single fixed fact and condition, a cane chair set in the
great monotony of out-of-doors. My eye, which is a captious organ,
is to find its entertainment all day long in bushes—and grass. All day
long. Except for meals it is absolutely laid down that I am not to
“come in.” They have not locked the doors, that might have been
negotiated, they have gone and put me on my honour. From
morning until night I am to sit for several months and breathe, with
the grass and the bushes, the beautiful pure fresh air. I don’t know
why they have not asked me to take root and be done with it. In
vain I have represented that microbes will agree with them no better
than with me; it seems the common or house microbe is one of the
things that I particularly mustn’t have. Some people are compelled
to deny themselves oysters, others strawberries or artichokes; my
fate is not harder than another’s. Yet it tastes of bitterness to sit out
here in an April wind twenty paces from a door behind which they
are enjoying, in customary warmth and comfort, all the microbes
there are.
I have consented to this. I have been wrought upon certainly, but I
have consented. For all that, it is not so simple as it looks. It is my
occupation to write out with care and patience the trifles the world
shows me, revolving as it does upon its axis before every intelligent
eye; and I cannot be divorced from all that is upholstered and from
my dear occupation by the same decree. And how, I ask you, how
observe life from a cane chair under a tree in a garden! There is the
beautiful pure fresh air certainly, and there are the things coming up.
But what, tell me, can you extract from air beside water; and though
a purely vegetable romance would be a novelty, could I get it
published? Tiglath-Pileser has contributed to my difficulty a book of
reference, a volume upon the coleoptera of the neighbourhood, and
I am to take care of it. I am taking the greatest care of it, but I do
not like to hand it back to him with the sentiments I feel in case one
fine day I should be reduced to coleoptera and thankful to get them.
Nevertheless I have no choice, I cannot go forth in the world’s ways
and see what people are doing there, I must just sit under my tree
and think and consider upon the current facts of a garden, the
bursting buds I suppose and the following flowers, the people who
happen that way and the ideas the wind brings; the changes of the
seasons—there’s fashion after all in that—the behaviour of the ants
and earwigs; oh, I am encouraged, in the end it will be a novel of
manners!
Besides, there ought to be certain virtues, if one could find them, in
plein air, for scribbling as well as for painting. One’s head always
feels particularly empty in a garden, but that is no reason why one
should not see what is going on there, and if one’s impressions are a
trifle incoherent—the wind does blow the leaves about—they will be
on that account all the more impressionistic.
Yet it is not so simple as it looks. In such a project everything
depends, it will be admitted, upon the garden; it must be a tolerably
familiar, at least a conceivable spot. The garden of Paradise, for
instance, who would choose it as a point de repaire from which to
observe the breed of Adam at the beginning of the twentieth
century? One would be interrupted everywhere by the necessity of
describing the flora and fauna; it would be like writing a botany book
with interpolations which would necessarily seem profane; and the
whole thing would be rejected in the end because it was not a
scientific treatise upon the origin of apples. Certainly, if one might
select one’s plot, the first consideration should be the geographical,
and I am depressed to think that my garden is only less remote than
Eve’s. It is not an English garden—ah, the thought!—nor a French
one where they count the seeds and the windfalls, nor an Italian one
sunning down past its statues to the blue Adriatic, nor even a
garden in the neighbourhood of Poughkeepsie where they grow
pumpkins. Elizabeth in her German garden was three thousand miles
nearer to everybody than my cane chair is at this moment. How can
I possibly expect people to come three thousand miles just to sit and
talk under my pencil-cedar? So “long” an invitation requires such
confidence, such assurance!
Who indeed should care to hear about every day as it goes on under
a conifer in a garden, when that garden—let me keep it back no
longer—is a mere patch on a mountain top of the Himalayas? Not
even India down below there, grilling in the sun which is not quite
warm enough here—that would be easy with snakes and palm-trees
and mangoes and chutneys all growing round, ready and familiar;
but Simla, what is Simla? An artificial little community which has
climbed eight thousand feet out of the world to be cool. Who ever
leaves Charing Cross for Simla? Who among the world’s multitudes
ever casts an eye across the Rajputana deserts to Simla? Does
Thomas Cook know where Simla is? No; Simla is a geographical
expression, to be verified upon the map and never to be thought of
again, and a garden in Simla is a vague and formless fancy, a
possibility, no more.
Yet people have to live there, I have to live there; and certainly for
the next few months I have to make the best of it from the outside.
If you ask yourself what you really think of a garden you will find
that you consider it a charming place to go out into. So much I
gladly admit if you add the retreat and background of the house.
The house is such an individual; such a friend! Even in Simla the
house offers corners where may lurk the imagination, nails on which
to hang a rag of fancy; but in this windy patch under the sky
surrounded by Himalayas, one Himalaya behind another indefinitely,
who could find two ideas to rub together?
Also my cane chair is becoming most pitiably weary; it aches in
every limb. The sun was poor and pale enough; now it has gone
altogether, a greyness has blown out of Thibet, my fingers are
almost too numb to say how cold it is. The air is full of an
apprehension of rain—if it rains do you suppose I am to come in?
Indeed no, I am to have an umbrella. Uncomforted, uncomfortable
fate! I wish it would rain; I could then pity myself so profoundly, so
abjectly, I would lie heroic, still and stoic; and at the appointed time
I would take my soaking, patient person into the house with a trail
of drops, pursued by Thisbe with hot-water bottles, which I would
reject, to her greater compassion and more contrition. And in the
morning it would be a queer thing if I couldn’t produce rheumatism
somewhere. Short of rain, however, it will be impossible to give a
correct and adequate impression of the bald inhospitality of out-of-
doors. They will think I want to be pitied and admired, and Thisbe
will say, “But didn’t you really enjoy it—just a little?”
Walls are necessary to human happiness—that I can asseverate.
Tiglath-Pileser, in bringing me to this miserable point, argued that I
should experience the joys of primitive man when he took all nature
for his living-room; subtle, long-lost sensations would arise in me, he
said, of such a persuasive character that in the end I should have to
combat the temptation to take entirely to the woods. I expect
nothing of the kind. My original nomad is too far away, I cannot
sympathize with him in his embryotic preferences across so many
wisest centuries. Moreover, if the poor barbarian had an intelligent
idea it was to get under shelter, and that is the only one, doubtless,
for which we have to thank him.
The windows are blank; they think it kindest, I suppose, not to
appear to find entertainment in my situation. It is certainly wisest; if
Thisbe showed but the tip of her pretty nose I should throw it up.
The windows are blank, the door is shut, but hold—there is smoke
coming out of the drawing-room chimney! Thisbe has lighted unto
herself a fire and is now drawn up around it awaiting the tea-things.
The house as an ordinary substantive is hard enough to resist, but
the-house-with-a-fire! No, I cannot. Besides it is already half-past
four and I was to come in at five to tea. I will obey the spirit and
scorn the letter of the law—I will go in now.
 Chapter II
A ROAD winds round the hill above our heads; another winds round
the hill below our feet; between is a shelf jutting out.
The principal object on the shelf is the house, but it also supports
the pencil-cedar, and the garden sits on it, and at the back the
servants’ quarters and stables just don’t slip off; so that when
Tiglath-Pileser walks about it with his hands in his pockets it looks a
little crowded. The land between the upper road and the shelf, and
the land between the shelf and the lower road is equally ours, but it
is placed at such an abrupt and uncompromising angle that we do
not know any way of taking possession of it. By surface
measurement we are doubtless large proprietors, but as the crow
flies we are distinctly over-taxed. This slanting hill-side is called the
khud; there is no real property in a khud. One always thinks of town
lots as flat and running from the front street to the back, with
suitable exposure for the washing. It just depends. This one stands
on end, you could easily send a stone rolling from the front street
into the back, if you knew which was which; and there would be
rather too much exposure for the washing. If you like you can lean
up against the khud, but that is the only way of asserting your title-
deed, and few people consider it worth doing. I may say that as
soon as you tilt your property out of the horizontal you lose control
over it. Things come up on it precisely as they like, in tufts, in
suckers and in every vulgar manner, secure and defiant it rises
above your head. Tiglath-Pileser and I have sought diligently, with
ladders, for some way of bringing our khud into subjection, but in
vain. As he says we might paper it, but as I say there are some
things which persons who derive their income from current literature
simply can not afford. So we are content perforce to look at it and
“call it ours,” as children are sometimes allowed by their elders to
do. The khud is God’s property but we call it ours. Trees grow on it
and it makes a more agreeable background, after all, than other
people’s kitchens.
Beyond the shelf the hill-side slopes clear from the upper road to the
lower, a stretch of indefinite jungle which flourishes, no man aiding
or forbidding. We have sometimes looked at it vaguely and thought
of potatoes, but have always decided that it was useful enough and
much less troublesome as part of the landscape. The other day the
law threatened us if Tiglath-Pileser did not forthwith declare his
boundaries in that direction, and he has since been going about with
a measuring-chain and a great pretence of accuracy; but it is my
private belief that neither he nor his neighbour will be equal to the
demand. They had better agree quickly and hatch a friendly
deposition together, and so escape whatever penalty the law awards
for not knowing where your premises leave off. Meanwhile the wild
cherry and the unkempt rhododendron grow in one accord
indifferent to these foolish claims. Such is ownership in a khud.
Our domain therefore is spread out about as much as it would hang
from a clothes-line, but the only part we really inhabit is the shelf. All
this by way of informing you honestly that the garden in which you
are invited to lighten so many long hours for me is no great place.
Here and now I abjure invention and idealization; you shall have just
what happens, just what there is, and it won’t be much. Pot-luck—
you can’t expect more from a garden on a shelf. I must admit that
before I was turned out to grow in it myself I thought it well
enough, but now I regard it critically, like the other plants. We might
do better, all of us, under more favourable conditions. We complain
unanimously, for one thing, of the lack of room. Cramped we are to
such an extent that I often feel thankful for the paling that runs
along the edge and keeps us all in. I suppose nobody ever believed
that his lot gave him proper scope for his activities in this world, but
I can testify that the wisteria which twines over the paling is pushing
a middle-aged hibiscus bush down the khud, while I, sitting here,
elbow them both, and a honeysuckle, climbing up from below has to
cling with both hands to hold on. If I invite a friend to take a walk in
my garden I must go in front declaiming and he must come behind
assenting; we cannot waste space on mere paths, and none of them
are wide enough for two people to walk abreast, except the main
one to the door, which had to be on account of the rickshaws. As it
is, pansies, daisies and other small objects constantly slip over the
edge and hang there precariously attached by the slenderest root of
family affection for days. We are all convinced in this garden, that
for expansion one would not choose a shelf, and that applies in quite
a ridiculous way to Simla itself, though perhaps it is hardly worth
while, out here in the sun, to write an essay to explain exactly how.
I would not show myself of a churlish mind; the day is certainly fine,
as fine a day as you could be compelled to sit out in. A week has
passed since I lent myself to be a spectacle of domestic tyranny and
modern science, and I hasten to announce that although I want to
eat more and to go to bed earlier I am not at all better. I have let
the week go by without taking any notice of it in this journal under
the impression that it was not worth the pains, as they say in
France. It was doubtless a wonderful week in nature, but which of
the fifty-two is not? and being certain that my fountain pen would be
anything but a source of amiability, I left it in the house. Moreover,
there is something not quite proper, one finds, in confiding an
experience of personal discomfort, undergone with the object of
improving one’s health, to the printed page; it is akin to lending
one’s maladies to an advertiser of patent medicines, and tends to
give light literature too much the character of a human document.
Also, to look back upon, the late week holds little but magnificent
resolution and the sensation of cold feet. All that need be said about
it is that I have at last arrived at the end of it, full of fortitude and
resignation. I am not at all better, but I am resigned and prepared to
go on, if it is required of me, and it seems likely to be. In fact it
appears to have occurred to nobody but myself that there was
anything experimental about this period. The whole summer is to be
the experiment, I am told, as often as if they were addressing the
meanest intelligence, which is not the case.
My sensibilities no doubt are becoming slightly blunted. A whole
week without a roof over one’s head except at night would naturally
have that tendency. I find that I am no longer a prey to the desire to
go in and look at something in the last number of The Studio, and
the more subtly tormented of modern novelties fails to hold my
attention for more than half-an-hour at a time. The spirit in my feet
that would carry me indoors has still to be bound down, but it has
grown vague and purposeless and might lead me anywhere, even to
the kitchen to see if the cook is keeping his saucepans clean, the
most detestable responsibility of my life. Now that I am a close
prisoner outside the house, by the way, it shall be delegated to
Thisbe. That is no more than right.
It was not worse than I expected, and it was a little less bad, let me
confess, than I described it to my family. I can now sympathize with
the youthful knight of the middle ages at the end of his first night’s
ghostly vigil in the sanctuary,—if the rest are no worse than this they
can be got through with. I am certainly on better terms with nature,
as he was on better terms with the skeleton in the vault,
apprehending with him in that neither of them was really calculated
to do us any harm. He no doubt lost his superstitions as I am losing
my finer feelings; whether one is sufficiently compensated for them
by a vulgar appetite and a tendency to drowsiness immediately after
dinner is a question I should like to discuss with him.
For one thing I am beginning to make acquaintance with the Days
and to know them apart, not merely as sunny days, dull days, windy
days and wet days, as they are commonly unobserved and divided,
but in the full and abundant personality which every one of the three
hundred and sixty-five offers to the world that rolls under it. To me
also, a very short time ago, the day was a convenient arrangement
for making things visible outside the house, accompanied by
agreeable or disagreeable temperatures; a mere condition
monotonously recurrent and quite subordinated to engagements. To
live out here enveloped by it, dependent on it, in a morning-to-night
intimacy with it, is to know better. The Day is a great elemental
creature left in charge of the world for as long, every twenty-four
hours, as she can see it. No one day is the same as another; those
of the same season have only a family likeness. They express
character and temperament, like people, and if you elect to live with
them, to throw yourself, as it were, upon their better nature with no
other protection than an umbrella, it just makes all the difference.
Some were tender and sweet-tempered, I remember, some were
thoughtful, with a touch of gloom, one was artist with a firm hand
and a splendid palette. And among all the seven I did not dislike a
single Day, which is remarkable when one thinks of the abuse one is
so apt to let fall, from the inside of a window, about what our
common little brains call “the weather.” There is no weather, it is a
poor and pointless term, there is only the mood of a day, and
however badly it may serve our paltry ends it is bound at least to be
interesting. When one reflects upon how little this great thing is
regarded and how constantly from behind glass, by miserable men,
one is touched with pity for the ingratitude of the race, and
astonishment at the amount of personal superiority to be acquired in
a week. Day unto day uttereth speech, swinging a lantern; it is the
business of night to wait. Day after day, too spiritual to be pagan,
too sensuous to be divine, speeds out of time into the eternity where
planets are served in turn. Behold, in spite of all their science, I
show you a mystery, high and strange whether the sun is in his
tabernacle or the clouds are on the hills. But it is there always, you
can see it for yourself. Go out into the garden, not for a stroll, but
for a day.
The week has brought me—and how can I be too grateful—a new
and personal feeling about this exquisite thing that passes. Waking
in the blackness of the very small hours I find a delicate gladness in
the thought of the far sure wing of the day. Already while we lie in
the dark it brushes the curve of the world in that far East which is so
much farther, already on a thousand slopes and rice fields the grey
dawn is beginning, beginning; and sleeping huts and silent palaces
stand emergent, marvellously pathetic to the imagination. Even
while I think, it is crisping the sullen waves of the Yellow Sea;
presently some outlying reef of palms will find its dim picture drawn,
and then we too, high in the middle of Hindostan, will swing under
this vast and solemn operation. With that precision which reigns in
heaven our turn will also come, and in my garden and over the hills
will walk another day.
 Chapter III
THERE is a right side and a wrong side to the mountain of Simla, for
it was a mountain eight thousand feet high and equally important
long before it became the summer headquarters of the Government
of India, and a possible pin-point on the map. These mountains run
across the tip of India, you will remember, due east and west, so
that if you live on one of them you are very apt to live due north or
south. On the south side you look down, on a clear day, quite to the
plains, if that is any advantage; you see the Punjab lying there as
flat as the palm of your hand and streaked with rivers, and the same
sun that burns all India bakes down upon you. On the north side you
have turned your back on Hindostan and sit upon the borders of
Thibet, a world of mountains bars your horizon, a hermit Mahatma
might abide with you in his ashes and have his meditations disturbed
by no thought of missionaries or income tax. Your prospect is all
blue and purple with a wonderful edge sometimes of white; cool
winds blow out of it and fan your roses on the hottest day. Out there
is no-man’s-land, where the coolies come from, or perhaps the
country of a little king who wears his crown embroidered on his
turban, and in India who recks of little kings? Out there are no
Secretariats, no Army Headquarters, no precedence, probably very
little pay, but the vast blue freedom of it! And all expanded, all
extended just at your front door. * * * * *
The asterisks stand for the time I have spent in looking at it. Freely
translated they should express an apology. I find it one of the
pernicious tendencies of living on this shelf that my eyes constantly
wander out there taking my mind with them, which at once becomes
no more than a vacant mirror of blue abysses. I look, I know,
immensely serious and thoughtful, and Thisbe, believing me on the
tip of some high imagination goes round the other way, whereas I
am the merest reflecting puddle with exactly a puddle’s enjoyment
of the scene. There is neither virtue nor profit in this, but if I
apologized every time I did it these chapters would be impassable
with asterisks. Thisbe’s method is much more reasonable; she takes
her view immediately after she takes her breakfast. Coming out
upon the verandah she looks at it intelligently, pronounces it
perfectly lovely or rather hazy, returns to her employments, and
there is an end to the matter. One cannot always, in Thisbe’s
opinion, be referring to views. I wish I could adopt this calm and
governed attitude. I should get on faster in almost every way. It is
my ignominious alternative to turn my back upon the prospect and
look up the khud.
Into my field of vision comes Atma, doing something to a banksia
rose-bush that climbs over a little arbour erected across a path
apparently for the convenience of the banksia rose-bush. Atma
would tell you, protector of the poor, that he is the gardener of this
place; as a matter of feet his relation to it is that of tutelary deity
and real proprietor. I have talked in as large a way as if it belonged
to Tiglath-Pileser because he pays for the repairs, but I should have
had the politeness at least to mention Atma, whose claims are so
much better. So far as we are concerned Atma is prehistoric; he was
here when we came and when we have completed the tale of one
years of exile and gone away he will also be here. His hut is at the
very end of the shelf and I have never been in it, but if you asked
him how long he has lived there he would say, “Always.” It must
make very little difference to Atma what temporary lords come and
give orders in the house with the magnificent tin roof where they
have table-cloths; some, of course, are more troublesome than
others, but none of them stay. He and his bulbs and perennials are
the permanent undisputed facts; it is unimaginable that any of them
should be turned out.
I am more reconciled to my fate when Atma is in the garden, he is
something human to look at and to consider, and he moves with
such calm wisdom among the plants. He has a short black curling
beard that grows almost up to his high cheek-bones, and soft round
brown eyes full of guileless cunning, and a wide and pleasant smile.
He is just a gentle hill-man and by religion a gardener, but with his
turban twisted low and flat over his ears he might be any of the Old
Testament characters one remembers in the pictured Bible stories of
one’s childhood. Something primitive and natural about him binds
him closely to Adam in my mind. It was with this simplicity and
patience, I am sure, that the original cultivator tied up his banksias
and saved his portulaca and mignonette after the fall, when he had
something to do beside come to his meals. I am not the only
person; everybody to whom it is pointed out notices at once how
remarkably Atma takes after the father of us all. I have often wished
to call him Adam because of his so peculiarly deserving it; but
Tiglath-Pileser says that profane persons, knowing that he could not
have received the name at his baptism, might laugh and thus hurt
his feelings. So he is Atma still. It is near enough.
He is also patriarchal in his ideas. This morning he came to us upon
the business of Sropo. Sropo, he said, wished for six days’ leave in
order to marry himself. “But,” said I, “this is not at all proper. Sropo
went away last year to marry himself. How shall Sropo have two
wives?”
“Nā,” replied Atma, with his kindly smile, “that was Masuddi.
Masuddi has now a wife and a son has been,[1] and his wages are
so much the less. Also without doubt this Sropo could not have two
wives.”
“Certainly not,” said Tiglath-Pileser, virtuously.
“Sropo is of my village,” Atma explained, genially, “and we folk are
all poor men. More than one wife cannot be taken. But if we were
rich like the Presence,” he went on, gravely, “we would have five or
six.”
Tiglath-Pileser shook his head. “You would be sorry,” said he. “It
would be a mistake,” but only I saw the ambiguity in his eye.
“It is not your Honour’s custom,” returned Atma, simply. “Sropo,
then, will go?”
“Call Masuddi,” said Tiglath-Pileser. “It is a serious matter, this of
wives.”
Round the corner of the verandah came Masuddi, shy and broadly
smiling, with an end of his cotton shirt in the corner of his mouth
and pulling at it, as other kinds of children pull at their pinafores.
“Masuddi,” said Tiglath-Pileser, “last year you made a marriage in
your house, and now you have a son. Er—which young woman did
you marry?”
Masuddi’s smile broadened; he cast down his eyes and scrabbled the
gravel about with his foot. “Tuktoo,” he said shamefacedly.
“Well, there is no harm in that. What is the name of your son?”
Masuddi looked up intelligently. “How should he have a name?” he
asked. “He has not yet four months. He came with the snow. When
he has a year, then he will get a name. My padre-folk—Brahmun—
will give it.”
“But you will say what it is to be,” I put in.
“Nā,” said Masuddi, “the padre-folk will say—to their liking.”
“Masuddi,” said Tiglath-Pileser, “speak straight words—do you beat
your wife?”
“Master,” replied Masuddi, “how shall I utter false talk? When she will
not hear orders I beat her.”
“Masuddi,” said I, “straight words—do you beat her with a stick?”
Laughter rose up in him, and again he chewed the end of his
garment. “According as my anger is,” he said, half turning away to
hide his face, “so I beat her.”
“Then she obeys?”
“Then fear is and she listens. Thus it is,” said Masuddi, his face
clearing to an idea, “as we servant-folk are before your Honours, so
they-folk are before us.”
“You may go, worthy Masuddi,” pronounced Tiglath-Pileser, “and
Atma may say to Sropo, who is listening behind the water-barrel,
that I have heard the words of Masuddi and they are just and
reasonable, and he may go also and marry himself, but it must be
done in six days, and it must not occur again.”
Masuddi and Sropo are two of the four who pull my rickshaw. When
I am not taking carriage exercise they will do almost anything else,
except sew or cook, but I have discovered that the thing they really
love to be set at is to paint. In the spring the paling required a fresh
brown coat, and in a moment of inspired economy I decided that
Masuddi and his men should be entrusted with it. Never was task
more willingly undertaken. With absorption they mixed the pigment
and thewi-oil, squeezing it with their hands; with joy they laid it on,
competing among themselves, like Tom Sawyer’s schoolfellows. “Lo,
it is beautiful!” Masuddi would exclaim after each brushful, drawing
back to look at it. I think they were sorry when it was done.
Atma is of these people, and the two grooms, and Dumboo, the
upper housemaid, a strapping treasure six feet in his stockings. I
would like it better if all our servants were, but it is impossible to
conceive Sropo doing up muslin frills—at least it is impossible to
conceive the frills—and I could not ask people to eat entrées sent up
by any friend of Masuddi’s. I admit they do not altogether adapt
themselves, or even wash themselves. I have before now locked
Masuddi and the others up with a tub and a bar of kitchen soap and
instructions of the most general nature, demanding, on their release,
to see the soap. It was the only reliable evidence. Besides if I had
not required to see my soap, worn by honest service, they would
have sold it and bought sweetmeats and gone none the cleaner.
They have many such little ways, which few people I know consider
as engaging as I do. But what I like best is their lightheartedness
and their touch of fancy. Sropo will go to his nuptials with a rose
behind his ear—where in my barbarous West does a young man
choose to approach the altar thus? and when Masuddi courted
Tuktoo upon the mountain paths in the twilight I think a shy idyll
went barefoot between them; though he, the male creature, would
make shame of it now, preferring to speak of sticks and of
obedience. They are the young of the world, these hill sons and
daughters, and they still remember how the earth they are made of
stirs in the spring. It is late evening in my garden now—there has
seemed, somehow, no good reason to go in, though one new leaf in
the borders has long been just like another—and far down the khud
I hear a playing upon the flute. It is a fragmentary air but vigorous
and sweet, and it brings me, dropping through the vast and purple
spaces of the evening, the most charming sensation. For it is not a
Secretary to the Government of India who performs, nor any
member of the choir invisible that sings hosannas over there to the
Commander-in-Chief, but a simple hill-man who would make a
melody because it is spring, and he has perchance been given leave
to go and marry himself.
 Chapter IV
PEOPLE are often removed from their proper social spheres in this
world and placed in others which they think lower and generally less
worthy of them. Their distant and haughty behaviour under these
circumstances is rather, I am afraid, like my own conduct at present,
down in the world as I am and reduced to the society of a garden. I,
too, have been looking about me with contemptuous indifference,
returning no visits, though quantities of things have been coming up
to see me, and perpetually referring to the superior circles I moved
in when I knew better days and went out to dinner. You may notice,
however, that such persons generally end by condescending to the
simpler folk they come to live among; it is dull work subsisting upon
the most glorious reminiscences and much wiser to become the
shining ornament of the more limited sphere to which one may be
transferred. That is the course I am considering, for whom cards of
invitation are dead letters, and to whom the gay world up here will
soon refer I have no doubt, as the late Mrs. Tiglath-Pileser who
chose so singularly to bestow her remains in a garden, though I am
really alive and flourishing there. I can never be the shining
ornament of my garden because nature intended otherwise and
there is too much competition, but I may be able to exert an
improving influence. It is not impossible, either, that I may find the
horticultural class about me more interesting than I find myself. I
have been accustomed to speak with quite the ordinary contempt of
persons who have “no resources within themselves”—in future I
shall have more sympathy and less ridicule for such. I should rather
like to know what one is expected to possess in the way of
“resources” tucked away in that vague interior which we are asked
to believe regularly pigeon-holed and alphabetically classified. We do
believe it—by an effort of the imagination—but only try, on a fine
day out-of-doors, to rummage there. Your boasted brain is a perfect
rag-bag, a waste-paper basket, a bran pie from which you draw at
hazard an article value a penny-ha’penny. This is disappointing and
humiliating when both you and your family believe that you have
only to think in order to be quite indifferent to the world and vastly
entertained. “Resources” somehow suggests the things one has
read, and I know I depended largely upon certain poets, not one of
whom will come near me unless I go personally and bring him from
the bookshelves in his covers. Pope for one—why Pope I cannot say,
unless because he would blink and cough and be fundamentally
miserable in a garden—great breadths of Pope I thought would visit
me in quotation. Not a breadth. Immortals of earlier and later
periods are equally shy; I catch at their fluttering garments and they
are off, leaving a rag in my hand. Only that agreeable conceit of
Marvell’s comes and stays,
“Annihilating all that’s made
To a green thought in a green shade,”
and I am ashamed to look it in the face—I have positively worked it
to death.
Apply within for lofty sentiments or profound conclusions, the result
is the same: these things fly the ardent seeker and only appear
when you are not looking for them. Instead you find shreds of likes
and dislikes, the ghost of an opinion you held last week, a desire to
know what time it is. My regrettable experience is that you can
explore the recesses of your soul out-of-doors in much less than a
week if you put your mind to it, with surprise and indignation that
you should find so little there.
“You beat your pate and fancy wit will come;
Knock as you please, there’s nobody at home.”
Dear me, there’s Mr. Pope, and very much, as usual, to the point!
No, resources are things you can lay your hands upon, and I have
come to believe that they are all in the house.
Everything is up and showing, the garden is green with promise, but
very few things are quite ready for my kind advances; very few
things are out. What a pretty idea, by the way, in that common little
word as the flowers use it! Out of the damp earth and the green
sheath, out into the sun with the others, out to meet the bees and
to snub the beetles,—oh, out! When young girls emerge into the
world they too are “out”—the word was borrowed, of course, from
the garden; its propriety is plain. Thisbe, I remember, is out this
season; but I do not see anything in the borders exactly like Thisbe.
Doubtless later on her prototype will come, in June I think, unfolding
a pink petal-coat. There is no hurry; it is yet only the second week in
April and these grey mountains are still delicate and dim under the
ideal touch of the wild apricot and plum. The borders may be empty,
but there is sweet vision to be had by looking up, and just a hint of
nature’s possible purposes with a khud. It now occurs to me that
there ought to be clouds and clouds of this pink and white
blossoming all about the house, behind as well as before, on each of
our several declivities,—there ought to be and there is not. I
remember now why there is not. One crisp morning last autumn
Tiglath-Pileser, who is a practical person, was struck by the fact,
though it is not a new one, that wild fruit trees may be made to
cultivate fruit by the process of grafting, and announced his
intention to graft largely. “Think,” said he, “of the satisfaction of
being able to write home to England that you are gathering from
your own trees quantities of the greengages which they pay
tenpence a pound for and place carefully in tarts!”
The proceeding had not my approval. It seemed to me that it would
be a good deal of trouble and care and thought and anxiety to grow
greengages on a khud, and we had none of these things to spare.
Neither would there be any satisfaction in gathering quantities of
them when one could buy a convenient number in the bazaar. We
could not eat them all, and it was not our walk in life to sell such
things; we might certainly expect to be cheated. We should be
reduced to making indiscriminate presents of them and receiving
grateful notes from people we probably couldn’t bear. Or possibly I,
like the enterprising heroine of improving modern fiction, would feel
compelled to start a jam factory, and did I strike him, Tiglath-Pileser,
as a person to bring a jam factory to a successful issue? At the
moment, I remember, an accumulation of greengages seemed the
one thing I precisely couldn’t and wouldn’t tolerate, but I didn’t say
very much, hardly more than I have mentioned, as the supreme
argument failed to occur to me at the time. The supreme argument,
which only visits you after watching the pink and white petals drop
among the deodars for hours together, is, of course, that if you can
afford to grow fruit to look at it is utilitarian folly to turn it into fruit
to eat. So I have no doubt he had his way.... I have been to see; it is
the case. Where there should be masses of delicate bloom there are
stumps, bare attenuated stumps, tied up in poultices with fingers
sticking out of them, which I suppose are the precious grafts. Well,
the devil enters into each of us in his own guise; I shall warn
Tiglath-Pileser particularly to beware of him in the form of a market
gardener.
I cannot conscientiously pass over the rhododendrons, which are all
aloft and ablaze just now. It would be unkind and ungrateful when
they have come of their own accord to grow on my khud and make
it in places really magnificent, though they arouse in me no
sentiment at all and I had just as soon they went somewhere else.
At home the rhododendron is a bush on a lawn; here it grows into a
forest tree, and when you come upon it far out in the wilds with the
sun shining through its red clusters against the vivid blue it stands
like candelabra lighted to the glory of the Lord. I will consent to
admire it in that office, but for common human garden uses I find it
a little over-superb and very disconcerting to the apricots and plums.
Also Thisbe will put it about in bowls, and will not see that its very
fitness for sanctuary purposes makes it worse than useless on the
end of a piano. To begin with, its name is against it. Philologically
speaking you might as well put a hippopotamus in a vase as a
rhododendron. Apart from that it sulks in the house and huddles into
bunches of red cotton. It misses the sun in its veins, I suppose, and
its spiky cup of leaves, and its proper place in the world at the end
of a branch. The peony, which it is a little like, is much better
behaved in a drawing-room, but then it has a leg to stand on; we all