Explore "Fountains in the Sand" by Norman Douglas on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I sat alone, screened from the midday heat, drowsy and content. It was a pleasant resting-place, under that leafy arbour, through which only a few rays of light could filter, weaving arabesque designs that moved and melted on the floor as the wind stirred the foliage overhead. And a pleasant occupation, listening to those amiable amphibians in the mere below -- they carried my thought back to other frog-concerts, dimly remembered, in some other lands -- and gazing through the green network of branches upon that sun-scorched garden, where now a silvery thread of water began to attract my attention as it stole, coyly, among the flower-beds.
The day is yet young, methought; it is too hot to think of marching home at this hour. Now is the time, rather, for a pipe of _kif_ -- if only to demonstrate the difference that exists between man and the ape. For your monkey can be taught to eat and drink like a Christian; he can even learn to smoke tobacco. But he cannot smoke _kif_: the stuff would choke him.