Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion

The early twilight of a Sunday evening in Hamilton, Bermuda, is an alluring time. There is just enough of whispering breeze, fragrance of flowers, and sense of repose to raise one's thoughts heavenward; and just enough amateur piano music to keep him reminded of the other place. There are many venerable pianos in Hamilton, and they all play at twilight. Age enlarges and enriches the powers of some musical instruments -- notably those of the violin -- but it seems to set a piano's teeth on edge. Most of the music in vogue there is the same that those pianos prattled in their innocent infancy; and there is something very pathetic about it when they go over it now, in their asthmatic second childhood, dropping a note here and there where a tooth is gone.

We attended evening service at the stately Episcopal church on the hill, where five or six hundred people, half of them white and the other half black, according to the usual Bermudian proportions; and all well dressed -- a thing which is also usual in Bermuda and to be confidently expected. There was good music, which we heard, and doubtless -- a good sermon, but there was a wonderful deal of coughing, and so only the high parts of the argument carried over it. As we came out, after service, I overheard one young girl say to another: