The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-07-22

II all their days and could not live any other way. .M.... TThey frequently do not see another white face for weeks, or even months, at a time. There is nothing to prevent them from mixing with their kind, if they choose. ..,..
 In the country districts of Jamaica somebody is always giving a ball or g. dinner or a tennis party. All that a man has to do, if he tires of his own company, is to saddle his pony and ride ten or twenty miles to another planta- tion. He is warmly welcomed in the hospitable cerole fashion, and may spend a pleasant evening with music and conversation. 4s - But the man of solitude prefers to sit on his own veranda after dinner, smoke his cigar and try to count the freflies 1 fitting through the chocolate trees. This he does year after year until he becomes an old man.
 | T went out to dinner last week." said one of these Crusoes of the bush. First time for over a year I'd left the plantation. Wish I hadn't. ES0O1 d1lliANIy PCOpICs5 AtCcil old lady, the mother; nice girls, too; played me Mendelssohn's Consolation and the Spring Song after dinner. hadn't heard any good music for over five years. But I wished hadn't gone.
 Too much racket for me. I was glad to get back to this quiet old plan tation and be alone again. I'm no good for society. I suppose I'm selfish: but IT prefer my own company to any, ll body's.
 This man is a type of thousands. Many of them are highly educated men, with cultivated tastes and talents. I An overseer in Jamaica, who never sees another white man if he can avoid doing so,< is a gifted musician. Every evening, after dinner, he sits down at his organ and plays the masterpieces of Beethoven and Palestrina until it is time to go to bed.
 Another has published anonymously a work on psychology which attracted attention and was wrongfully atraibu- ted to several distinguished men. If a visitor can talk intelligently on ques- ltions of metaphysics and psychology, this man gives him hearty welcome to his plantation; noti he prefers to be left alone
 l Some of these men write poetry by the yard and send it to the local news papers. It is usually rubbish, but occa- sionally t has merit. Here is an ex- ample. written by a Jamaican under the pseudonym Tom Redcanl. " which ! J5y;voS a,, idao xr,lxr eo,,, e S,f tbnra har. limits shun cities and men:
 The night on the town has fallen,
 And the gas lamps, few and far,
 Outfanle like the picket fires j On the rim of lonely war. \ The lights of the town. Madonna,
 Are the eyes of a souls despair;
 The streets are the thoughts, Madonna l That are dreary and dark and bare. IThe light that the world affords us, I Though we win where it burns its
 best, s#@ l Reveals but the pain and the hurry, l The stir of a streets unrest. X And we turn from streets confusion I From the toll and the city's pain. T From all that the heart desires, And all that the hand can gain. X For what if we win it or lose it. I The praise that the world bestows; It fades like gathered blossom,
 It dies like whitening rose. sI An, the calm of God, Madonna, It is far from the streets away, 4 And, seeking that calm. Madonna, S The hearts of thy children stray. T A young Englishman, who lived alone sl on an isolated plantation. got all his K pleasure in life out of a gramaphone N He would spend hours every evening N alone listening to it.
 M He was never known to spend a nigh N away from it It was all the society he the world and married her. She soor civilized him.
 When man falls under the thral Hdom of solitude, marriage is the onl. Icure; but often he will not marry, elm. Iiply because he would have to give ur khis llernit's life.
 A young American planter of the ses ltcoast of Jamaica was in that position tTIe loved a pretty and charming creol' tgirl, and she cared for him. But some
 how re would not make the plunge.
 He hated the idea of losing her, ant vet he hated as much the idea of givins
 up his solitary life. Month afteI ! month he delayed the formal proposal
 which everybody was expecting, unti at last the affair had a natural result the girl married another man out O
 pacut.
 That made the American confirmed nfisanthrope, and now he is ranked among the most solitary of all the her rrsits in Jamaica. l But it is not necessary to go to tn, tropics to learn the tflraidom of soli
 tutde. Many men in the heart of grea cities know it as intimately as Alexan der Selkirk ever did.
 l One such man is the head of a larg,
 banking concern in New York. H. lives alone save for his servants, t,
 whom he only speaks to give com
 masnds. That is seldom necessary, al
 they know by long usage exactly wha he wants on all occasions.
 He has no friends, hardly a single ac quaintance, never a visitor. Every da. l he walks to his office from his hom I andlwalks back-two miles each way. | At his office he is merely a highly or