Approximately 62 years ago it was my good fortune to meet Mr. Ansell Hart, who was at that time, Solicitor for my Father's Co. Williamson Bros. Ltd. I was then 18 years of age, and recently out of school. He was concerned to enquire of my future plans (of which at the time I had none), and he was kind enough to offer me a position in his Law Firm of Manton & Hart. For the ensuing 40 years I remained in the firm, firstly as an Associate Solicitor, and then as a Partner, and at all times during that period was privileged to witness first hand, not only his expertise as a Lawyer, but more importantly his deep sense of basic decency and fairness which he displayed to all and sundry.

I remember him cautioning me -------- " Debtors are entitled to the same treatment and respect as is paid to Creditors". And in addition, at all such times his humour was always lurking nearby.

Ansell Hart was a highly respected member of the Legal Profession, and his good counsel was readily available to not only Senior, but to the most Junior of his profession. I could say much more, but I truly believe he would call me aside, and say " Ceddy, come on, enough is enough ". But apart from his scholarly pursuits and achievements, there were occasions when his presence was unmistakably recognised. Mr. Ansell had a truly wholesome and unrestrained  "Sneeze" On these occasions, and they were quite frequent, the entire office staff, and clients, if they were present, would break into good-natured laughter. It was thought that the explosion could be heard at the other end of Barry Street! His revered and treasured partner Victor Manton did not sneeze loudly. But on the telephone he could be heard blocks away. I remember Mr. Ansell on one such occasion, suggesting that the phone could be replaced, and the conversation continued through the opened office window! I saw him in the Office Reception Area take up his position between two elderly seated clients, and with a boyish grin remark. "You never thought that I would ever come between you both, did you?"

There is so much more that I could recount, but at another time and place.

Before concluding however, I must place on record that this distinguished son of Jamaica was not only an outstanding Lawyer and Scholar, but as is evidenced by his MONTHLY COMMENTS, he displayed his prominence as an Historian who contributed in no small measure to the enlightenment and education of Jamaican generations both present and to come.

Ansell Hart lived a long and distinguished life, and on his passing on the 23rd. of April 1973, at the age of 95 years, was survived by his three sons Sam, Herbert, Richard, and his daughter Consie, and all of whom I am sure are justly proud of their beloved father.

Surrey, British Columbia

Mr. Ansell Hart published the last issue of his  Comments in November of 1969 when he was already more than ninety years old. When he died in 1973 at the age of ninety five, the "life and times" of his father Sam Hart (1844 - 1919) and himself had spanned more than a century and a quarter or almost all of the formative history of present day Jamaica.

Ansell Hart's  Comments can be read and enjoyed by people who may remember Ansell personally and equally by those that were not born when he had long passed away. They contain all sort of cryptic and abbreviated memories of school friends, business associates, places, events and politicians.

Hopefully, you may  find new information on some of your Jamaican ancestors!

The Comments in this publication on this web-site are the complete set of Volume 6 with the text as originally published by Ansell Hart. The first issue was Volume 6. No 1 of December 1967 and the final Volume 6 Issues 23 & 24 were published in November of 1969. The Herald Limited-Printers- 43 East Street in Kingston originally printed them. The Annual subscription was ten shillings sterling or about US$ one, in today's money. In all, the issues of Volume 6, contained less than two hundred single column pages, when they would have been sparse even if they had been one thousand pages.

In compiling this document, the only license that I have taken, is to attach some headings to various sections, so that the Table of Contents may be more useful and to append a few notes. You may go to any section listed in the Table of Contents by "clicking" on the description given there. I have also included an Index for those who wish to download the entire document.

Dr. John B. deMercado.

Ottawa, Ontario

INTRODUCTORY

In July 1964, when publication of the Comments was discontinued, Jamaicans appeared to be recovering from a long period of insensitivity to local history. The early English Settlers had on the contrary emphatically asserted their local loyalties; and, with the claim that "freedom does not stop with the shores of Britain", they had achieved a substantial measure of self-government. However, after the rise of the coloured class, mutual, fears and jealousies between them and the white plantocracy resulted in the development of strong loyalties to Britain, which somewhat inhibited local loyalties.

In December 1865, Governor Edward John Eyre, who had little respect for local self-government, exploited the panic created by a local Riot Which had been accompanied by brutal murders, and successfully invited the local Legislature "to make a great and generous sacrifice for the sake of the country and in immolating on the altar of patriotism the two branches of the Legislature . . . to hand down to posterity a noble example of self-denial and heroism"!.

In the intervening years, the wheel has turned full circle. Those who were formerly denied social recognition in their own country (while receiving it in generous measure in England) and more particularly their brothers of sabler hue are heard to claim that they are the only true Jamaicans; while those who formerly looked down upon them socially watch their steps while trying to maintain the precarious claim that they also are true Jamaicans. Many other changes, social, economic, and particularly political have supervened; but most of all there have been immense and varied changes in our habits of daily life. The present generation little know how different were the ways and the daily life of their ancestors of eighty, fifty or even twenty five years ago. For example:

In the 1840s, the paucity, not the superfluity, of the population was the bugbear. A member of the Legislature was being paid a commission to bring in labourers from Germany. I believe he drew his commissions, but the so-called labourers turned out to be artisans with their tools of trade, and there was one distinguished accountant. They all became worthy citizens; and have left their mark on our country in their no less worthy descendants. (The distinguished accountant was instrumental in having my Aunts educated in Germany. His grandson is now my neighbour and friend).

In the 1860s, the population numbered little over 400,000, of whom less than 2,000 "had the Vote", which was jealously guarded by a ten shillings registration fee and rating according to income or property. (Representation based on tax-paying capacity was the order of the day).

DRESS FOR THE MOVIES

Comparatively recently, no admittance to the Palace Amusement Company without a jacket, and carefully watched on entrance to the Gaiety without one. No ladies without stockings or with bobbed haft, no bathing suits for gentlemen, no entrance to the Doctor's Cave in Montego Bay for the female sex. Status and prejudice existed in all classes. An Office Woman at five shillings per week "gave notice" rather than serve a new Chinese lady clerk. A policyholder discontinued his policy on receiving a receipt signed by a clerk with a Chinese name. (Charlie Johnston was to remark (jocularly perhaps): "And, quite right too. Don't you know that the Chinese put your father and me out of the "Provision business")". It should have been mentioned that milk was at 6d per quart and beef 6d per lb. Salt fish cost 3d per lb.

COST of LIVING

The JOB MARKET

Very few white-collar jobs for those of sable hue; and very few of them at the Boarding Schools. ("A child that is not clean and neat, with lots of toys and things to eat, he is a naughty child, I'm sure; or else--his dear Papa is poor"). A well-to-do black lady was refused admittance with her children to a public Xmas Party at Myrtle Bank Hotel; and a lad was censured by his friends for partnering the sable-hued B. M. Clark at the All-Jamaica Tennis Tournament. Up to recently, the commercial advertisements in the Gleaner featured only white customers. But Hotel rates were 10/- per day (inclusive) and a restaurant lunch, one shilling and sixpence, calling for a traditional three pence tip. Rum was 4/- and Whisky 5/- per bottle and good cigars five for a shilling. Gentlemen did not smoke cigarettes in those days; and chain-smoking was not in evidence, certainly not among gentlefolk. To smoke in the "drawing-room'", permission was invariably asked of the hostess. Sanitary arrangements in the house were unknown. Col. Ward's palatial "Roslyn Hall", Stiebel's home '"Devon Lodge" on the New Hope Road, the wealthy Verley homes were all equipped only with 'W.Cs" or "pit closets", and kitchens and "terrace baths" were in detached quarters. When Cecil Lindo ("the millionaire") returning from Costa Rica about 1915, took possession of the Haggart home (Haggart was Col. Ward's son-in-law), he surprisingly found himself compelled at night to find his way to the "out-house" by the aid of a storm-lantern. Horseback riding, transportation by buggy or carriage, and later the bicycle, or for public conveyance, the mule-drawn tram-car (in Kingston) and the one-horse bus prevailed. A lad might go by buggy from Montego Bay to St. Ann's Bay to a dance, and return early next morning sleepily to his job "at the store". In Kingston, a lad about town might go to an informal dance almost every night in the week: refreshments: cool drinks and biscuits, while a talented pianist of the family vamped out the waltzes '"by air". I well remember Miss Georgiana Dunn's dancing evenings, where, I imagine, many a match was made, frequent visitors being the Gunters, the Millers, the Thwaites and the Pascoes. Most of us walked to the resort on Highholborn Street, then more respectable than it is today. Many gentlefolk, for economy lived in a lane. "And after all", as one friend remarked, "my lane ends in a Street'; and so it did. Those were the days!.

I REMEMBER (OR REMEMBER READING)

On Beckford, Hakewill & Duperly

Memory in man is a self-conscious process. Apparently, without self-consciousness the "animal" has merely "retentiveness". For memory, there must, of course, be concentrated attention or interest, often spontaneous or automatic; and there is always an association of ideas, experience or event, and a good deal of self-dramatisation. Of such, at least, are compounded my early memories. Some people claim to remember as far back as three years of age, mine seems to go back to four years; and one particular event is pinpointed as having occurred when I was exactly four and a half years old. It was the December 1882 fire in Kingston, or rather the news of it reaching Montego Bay while it was occurring. There have been many fires which wrought havoc in Kingston: 1780, 1843, 1862, 1882 and 1907. As the fires and the changes wrought by the hands of man, have changed beyond recognition the appearance of the city as it was in 1843, the historical-minded are fortunate in having the famous pictures of Kidd and Duperley of that date, showing the crowded city, bare of trees, with jalousied houses closely packed, extending from the foreshore to North Street. Kidd was from the Scotch Academy and was visiting his brother, a Clerk in the Public Works Department. Duperley was a daguerreotype photographer. Of landscape artists, in addition to Kidd, we had (among others) Robertson 1778, and Hakewill 1824. Duperly also was to execute a remarkable pirating of Hakewill's aquatints, superimposing on them scenes of the slave revolt of 1831-32. Robertson was a guest of William Beckford, who planned to have him and another artist illustrate his projected history of Jamaica. Alas! the history was published from the Fleet Debtor's prison in London; for the hurricane of 1780 (vividly described in the "history") ruined Beckford. Hakewill's pictures are accompanied by historical notes, eloquently testifying to the benevolent nature of Jamaican Slavery.

Kingston & Port Royal - 18^th Century

But, back to the story of the Kingston fires; Port Royal had been first chosen to be the chief city of the island; but, after being first seriously damaged by the great Earthquake of 1692, it was again ravaged by fire in 1703; and there were successive settlements of the inhabitants across the harbour on the Liguanea Plain belonging to Sir William Beeston, the new town, laid out in lots, being called "Kingston". All newcomers building in 1703 were exempt from taxation for seven years. As the years passed, first a town, then a city and a parish, Kingston became an important centre of trade. Its standing as entrepot between Europe and the South American States, however, was rudely shaken when steam communication supplanted the sailing ship. In the meantime, and later, Kingston was to experience the disastrous fires above mentioned.

Kingston Fires - 1862 & 1882

Three years after the 1862 fire, Kingston's Common Council gave way to a nominated Municipal Board under the new Crown Colony form of Government. In 1872, after many previous attempts, dating from 1755, Sir John Peter Grant the first Governor under Crown Colony Government summarily removed the capital of the island from Spanish Town to Kingston.

Sugar & Agriculture

Steamships & Transport of Produce

By the 1880s, Kerr & Co. had become a live force in the Montego Bay and Jamaican economy, with branches scattered throughout Jamaica. The Banana of the day was the Gros Michel of glorious memory (introduced by Pouyatt from Martinique), called in St. James and Hanover "Goyark" (which in the delightful native dialect meant "Go-to-New York"). When Charlie Johnston was advised that we had established as a Cable address in New York, the word "Goyarke" he cabled: "Wrongly spelt---No "e" in the word". The snag was that the authorities would not accept less than seven letters for a Cable address. Charlie Johnston's Father (Pat Johnston) was a pioneer in the sailing-ship banana trade from Hanover. Later he was Manager for one of Kerr & Co's Branches; but lost his job when his son Charlie, established his own business. Still later, Charlie Johnston was able to introduce one of his visiting customers to his newly appointed agent: Kerr & Co.

John E. Kerr, a relative of the Cokes of St. Elizabeth had come to the island, a young midshipman at the age of fifteen (reminiscent of the English-Jamaican patriot, Samuel Long). He lived at Richmond Hill at the top of an extension of Union Street; and his line of shops extended from beyond McCatty's Dispensary and Ramsay's Terrace Store and Abraham Hart's and (I think) George Phillip's shops to the Sea. His eldest son, John, handled the business in Boston, Lea, the dry goods department in Montego Bay, Harry, after his father's death, during the 1914 war, became a shipping magnate in the United States, while the delightful W. Coke Kerr remained alone to carry on the Montego Bay business, and to become a pioneer proponent of the Cooperative movement in Jamaica. John Edward was representative for St. James in the Legislative Council (after the severance for representation of Trelawny from St. James). He was succeeded by David Aurelius Corinaldi (who promptly talked the House out to rescind the "Kerr Sharp Resolution" limiting the length of speeches in the House). But of David Aurelius Corinaldi (who bestowed the accolade of "Noble St. James") and his eccentricities and how he displaced John Edward Kerr--well, that is another story.

When I first made real contact with the land and growing things, I reflected: "My education has been neglected. I have learnt from books, not from observation". Further reflection brought the realisation that my debt to books was indeed great; and might have been greater if my inclination toward discursive reading had not been channeled into set-books for examination purposes. How much of the immense store of Greek and Latin writings, of French and English Prose and Poetry, I had missed. Nevertheless, in slight measure I have tried to make up for this in after-school days (and nights); and have wondered at the restraint (or indolence) of my old schoolfellows in allowing the getting-and-spending of life and the absorption of business and finance to keep them away from books. Of course, one meets difficulties in the pursuit of knowledge; but "a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for "other visions beatific") for?" There are, of course, the old favourites on one's bookshelf (many of them missing too); but there are exciting new books in Science, Philosophy, and whatnot. I feel sometimes that to miss acquaintance with the writings of Spinoza and Swedenborg, of Korzybski and Ouspensky, or Ramacharaka and. Hinton, must be a substantial loss.

CAUSERIES.

No. I December 1967: ERRATUM: For "539 acres" on the third page beginning "In 1881-2", please substitute: "595,887 acres".

I am convinced that the recreational urge is one of Man's strongest and most serviceable instincts. How else can we explain the enthusiasm, almost the abandon, with which one throws one's self into the daily occupation of thinking and doing, of getting and spending, of vice and virtue, of love and hatred?" "I won't do business with that man; my business is my pleasure and recreation", said the financial genius and businessman, Cecil Lindo. To my Father, his BUSINESS was a live entity, to which he gave the most meticulous care and attention. To each his particular cherished occupational affection.

"O! Me; O! Life. Of the questions of these recurring, of the endless trains of the faithless, of cites filled with the foolish... What good amid these, O Me, O Life? The Answer: That I am here; that Life exists and 'my entity; that the powerful play goes on, and I may contribute a verse".

If it does nothing else, the recreational urge seems to give an affirmative answer to the question: "Is Life worth living?".

Another urge to which we seem to pay little attention, but which plays an important part in the life of Man, is called by Naturalists "Mimicry". The insect camouflages itself by taking on the appearance of its environment of leaf or twig. Is it a protective device? as the Naturalists claim. Is it not rather the instinctive urge to dissimulate, to follow fashion, to appear to be like the neighbouring fellow, to conform to environment, to wish to seem to be what one is not? As the Roman actor of old wore his "persona" or mask, us not one's personality one's mask?

Both the recreational urge and mimicry might well serve to present one's self to one's self in a fav-ourable light, and so serve to preserve one's self-respect. As David Harum said: Fleas serve to prevent a dog from brooding too much about being a dog.

MEMORIES AND REFLECTIONS.

Memories of old Montego Bay are pleasant ones, breathing throughout a pervading human atmosphere of goodwill and kindness. (I had reached this point when there came to my attention Jay Monroe's revolting nightmare "The Violent Necessity" (Sunday Gleaner Nov. 5); and I pause to remark that it seems to me to be a half-baked and spurious paleontology and philosophy to regard violence as being endemic in human nature. To see so much evil, one must indeed keep very bad company, either with one's fellows or with one's own mind.)

I said that there was a pervading human atmosphere of goodwill and kindness in old Montego Bay; and I was about to add (and must add): and purpose, always purpose. I got from my Father the idea that WORK "made the Man, and want of it the fellow." My Father was a Man of few words; but the clear impression that my young mind received from him, without lecture or palaver, was that, to be self-respecting, one must work, be honest and tell the truth. It was as simple as that. By and large, that is the Jewish ETHIC.

There was no vacation or holiday for anybody in those days. Later came the innovation of "early closing" at 2 p.m. on Thursdays. Saturday was a hectic day at the Store, packed tight with customers. It was market-.day at the Bay; and the peasants came in to sell and buy. An important purchase, like a wedding outfit would be reserved for a quieter day. On Saturdays, a close watch was kept for the "gonafs", some of whom were well known. One crowded day, an alarm was raised, hue and cry and chase, and a woman brought back from Barnett, with a bolt of cloth found in the folds of her frock. She was panting and frightened. My Father told her not to do it again, and sent her away free. That spirit of kindliness and understanding seemed to me to permeate all classes.

My Father's first shop in Montego Bay (like its successor) was called the Arcade. The old Arcade and the Montego Bay Court House faced one another across the Square. I have always admired the simple lines of the Court House, with its re-entrant balcony, the scene of many recreational gatherings; for it was Town-Hall as well as Court House, with Government Offices downstairs, and at the back the Police guardhouse. One night my Father was called there as a Justice of the Peace by the Sergeant of Police. He had gone down to the fire which had caught in the town. '"Mass Sammy, this is an awkward case. Among the crowd in the excitement of the fire this gentleman was caught - - - - -" "I know", my Father said, quickly taking the hint, "excitement of the fire. Better let hlm go, don't you think?" And so a normally "perfect gentleman" was saved from (perhaps deserved) disgrace.

Memories come to me of our livng on the upper floor of the Arcade during an "interregnum". I call "interregnum" those periods when there was no Mother in the home. At that time, the Union Street house was being prepared to welcome my Father's second Wife; for my Mother had died in 1880. My Father's domestic problems must have been serious ones. There was a family of five, the eldest only eight years old, and I, the youngest living, only two years old. The problem arose again, when his second Wife died in 1886 leaving him with two more infants.

An ancestor in the paternal line reached Jamaica in 1786. He was Moses Hart, a son of Aaron Hart (1670--1756) the first chief Rabbi of London; and Moses's son Aaron Hart was my grandfather. His Wife, my paternal grandmother, was the niece of Jacob Adolphus, who is frequently mentioned in Lady Nugent's Journal (and whose entirely human letter book--1819-1827--while he was physician to the forces in Jamaica, came into my possession, and is now at West India Reference Library). The trek to Jamaica of these Harts and Adolphuses is somewhat puzzling, for they had found safe and solid refuge in London, with much social and economic stability.

My memories of Granny and Grandpa are memories of much affection and goodwill, not only to us but also to their less fortunate friends--I can still see the old lady sharing out some of the four o'clock dinner to be despatched to some gentlefolk in need. When my Grandfather died in 1884, we were (children and all) wearing mourning sleeve bands for Queen Victoria's son, Prince Leopold. Up to the time of her death in 1888, my Grandmother habitually slept on a feather-bed.

There was a daguerreotype photo of my Mother and Father by Duperly, from which an enlarged photograph (which I still have) of my Mother with curls and crinoline was made many years later.

My Father told me that he had no school education beyond the age of ten years. (The difficulty appeared to be adequate shoe-leather; for the shoes wore out very quickly and money was short. His Father had been ruined and his wharf property at Reading with contents destroyed, in the Slave Revolt of 1831-32). My Father showed no sign of being uneducated. This is understandable, comparing his and my book education at about the same age. At ten or eleven, Miss Annie Scott (at the Long Store, a tall three storey building where St. James Street was met by Barnett Street) had managed to pass on to me a well grounded appreciation of reading, writing and spelling and of the mysteries of the Tables and Arithmetic, along with smatterings of Science from Paul Bert's and Brewer's questions and answers, the whole gamut of English History and even some French History, with glimmerings of what a Frenchman thought about the English ( and how to pronounce Hugh Caper and Saint Denis). I was also well-ground-ed in the roots of words (according, I think, to Butters Spelling); and the School was about to study German History, when I left at the age of eleven and a half. Every Friday, the whole school was lined up and put through the paces in "promiscuous Spelling", in a sort of exciting oral spelling bee, with constant changes of place. Miss Annie once told me I was ambitious. This was disturbing and puzzling; for I had learnt that the word ambition came from the Latin roots ambi and itum, meaning going around to gather votes for one's self. Once I thought my Father had made a terrible bloomer in saying "Oee poloee" for '"hoy polloy". Fortunately, I said nothing; for a Greek lady in London (reading for the London Matriculation) told me in later years that no aspirate was pronounced in either ancient or modern Greek. But more of my Father's self-education later. I am convinced however that sound elementary education fits one largely for self-education, at least by books.

It was at the old Arcade that I heard the news of the 1882 Fire which destroyed a large part of Kingston. I believe that it was riveted in my memory by the fact that I was at the time engaged in the backyard of the Arcade in the thrilling occupation of making a house-boat out of an emptied packing case. The Arcade, with its imposing line of iron railings, had many other memory associations for me, among them being the distant "Cage" or temporary lock-up into which mysterious wrong-doers were said to occasionally disappear.

On Saturday enough money had to be obtained from sales over the counter to carry the business over the lean week-days. Takings of £100 signified a bumper Saturday. Edgar Turnbull was my Father's rival in the haberdashery business; and often on a Saturday I reported on the comparative size of the frequenting crowds at each place of business. Friday was a quiet day. On that day the poor came for their coppers, which were carefully collected and set aside for the purpose.

After working for a time as a clerk in Montego Bay, my Father opened shop at Copse, a Sugar Estate centre, where he served flour, saltfish and crackers and various articles of trade. He told me of an unexpected windfall, while he was at Copse. A well-to-do East Indian Customer, wanting to cash in on his Endowment Policy, persuaded my Father to buy it. Some time after, the man suspected his Wife of infidelity; and exposure to the damp air, as he kept watch on her, brought about his untimely death.

My Father's domestic problems continued to be heavy ones. My Mother had died in 1880, leaving him with two girls and three boys ranging from eight years to two years old. He did not marry again until 1884; and his second wife died in 1886 leaving him with two more infants. In the meantime, he and his elder brother (both now in fairly comfortable circumstances) were able to take care of the aged parents. One comforting feature of the Hart family was that they did not worry. It is related of my Grandfather that in his worst days of economic pressure, he cheerfully told my Grandmother, as he 1eft the house, to "put on the pot". As for my Father, he told us that he employed six old women at four bits a week each to do his worrying for him. It must be admitted however that the old days were free of the haunting terror of the present high-cost of living, the personal and public entertainment surfeit, and the gadgetry life.

The story of the 1831-32 Slave Revolt which ruined my Grandfather was told almost immediately by one Bernard Martin Senior and many years later by Rev. Henry Bleby, who wrote again on the Morant Bay Riot of 1865 and the cruel bloody aftermath of panic and reprisal.

Among the memories of goodwill, come the memories of the caterers of Montego Bay and the de-lectables that they dispensed for a living. Prima inter pares was dear, kindly Miss Ada Levien, whose "yard" and humble cottage were on the lane that ran by the old Arcade. There she might be seen by day busy at her chores of making peppermint candy, bull's-eyes, coconut drops and the pink and white coconut candy, and preparing the trays of these and of soups and the minute Montego Bay oysters, some to be sold on shop piazzas, some to be taken to regular and other customers. Miss Ada bore a famous name. Her Father, Sydney Levien edited and produced a Newspaper. There were as many newspapers in the old days as there were ships moving in and out of the island's bays and harbours. Levien narrowly escaped the fate of George William Gordon in the panic of the day (1865). Detained at Up Park Camp, he was released on Habeas Corpus application to the Civil Court. Incidentally, (Governor Eyre and General Nelson (belatedly after the execution of George William Gordon) woke up to the fact that it was illegal to transport an accused charged with committing an offence in a non-martial law district for trial by Court Martial elsewhere. Quite unconsciously they convicted themselves of the judicial murder of Gordon.

In a tall three storey building in lower Union Street, Mrs. Jervis and her kindly mother, the widow, Mrs. Isaacs, carried on the business of lodging house keepers and caterers. After her mother's death, Mrs. Jervis moved across the road and carried on the Staffordshire Hotel. Mrs. Rerrte, half sister to Mrs. Jervs, was also an excellent maker of cakes; but she was in easy circumstances, and was not one of the public caterers. Her husband, Alexander Rerrie, was manager of Kerr & Co's business; and they had a large family of boys and girls, and one of the latter was to become famous in the hotel business, but more of her later.

Mrs. Joe Levy (Aunt Joe) made a specialty of juicy sugar buns, thus helping to maintain the family; for Uncle Joe's auctioneering business was not very profitable.

Cakes were an important article of diet. They provided a cheap lunch, with beef patties and plantain tarts selling at a quattie each. The daily diet lent itself to a frugal lunch: early morning coffee, with very thin bread and butter; heavy eleven o'clock breakfast cake or light tea or fruit at two or three p.m., dinner for children at 4 p.m. and for adults an hour or two later, with growing boys, to the despair of the housekeeper, raiding the safe for a going-to-bed snack. My Father's juicy broiled steak with sliced raw onion went to the Store for him in a chafing (hot-water) dish.

The quality of the food was excellent; and the butchers knew how to "cut," There were specialties of mud fish and goggle eyes and luscious turtle steaks, and occasionally ring tail pigeon and salt and smoked salmon, salted mackerel and shad. The rice and peas of Kingston was not commonly used in Montego Bay. There was of course salt fish and ackee; and the fruits, No. 11 Mangoes and Naseberries were especially luscious and full-flavoured. I think the limestone soil helped in this. There was no refrigeration. Daily and weekly provision filled the daily needs. Before the establishment of a local ice factory, ice (used mainly for drinking water) came by boat from Kingston. There were no carbonated drinks, but plenty of new sugar beverage. There was no afternoon drinking. Early dinner left no time for this. Visiting was after dinner, and, with us, mostly between the cousinly families. There were nineteen of the Corinaldi family; and there were offshoots from some of them. Kissing on the lips was the cousinly custom. One of my sisters, breaking the custom by stubbornly offering her cheek, was said to be somewhat stuck-up. She was merely hygienic and perhaps a bit reserved. Why don't the Negroes habitually kiss? An Irish army officer, who lived among them in the St. Arm mountains, said: '"Because they regard the kiss as a prelude to the sexual act and treat it with appropriate respect." This perhaps explains the shrieks with which an audience greets osculation on the screen.

On the hill where later the Ethel Hart hotel stood was the Payne lodging, kept by Miss Louise Payne and her distinguished looking white-bearded father. By a curious quirk, Miss Payne owned the "grassyard" in Kingston, a lot of land where the daily supply of guinea grass was deposited in South Parade, where Jethro Few, after the 1907 Earthquake, was to build his post-earthquake mushroom shop of galvanized zinc sheets.

Apropos of nothing, by the time of the historian Edward Long (1774), the custom of faithful con-cubinage had became well established in Jamaica; and many of the progeny were to become respected and illustrious citizens, with the historian deploring the "infatuation" of the White Man, and Lady Nugent the morals of the Military, and the House of Assembly limiting the amount of endowment in property and money that White Fathers might be permitted to give to their coloured children. But faithful concubinage was not limited to coloured "housekeepers". In Montego Bay and elsewhere many cultured and well-to-do gentlemen lived in faithful concubinage with women who were apparently White. I have in mind particularly two Montego Bay families, lifelong friends with our family, outstanding mental, spiritual and physical specimens of humanity. In the history of Jamaica two particularly well endowed illegitimates stand out: Richard Hill, who claimed to be of Arawak descent through his Mother; his father was an Englishman; and George William Gordon of Scot and African ancestry.

Before the enactment in 1881 of the Registration Act, Rev. Henry Clarke campaigned for registration of illegitimate births. I often wondered whether the campaign was relevant; for every proud mother was only too prone to register the name of the father of her illegitimate child, giving the eldest the father's given name. There are many instances of the legitimate and illegitimate offspring bearing the father's given name, so that two half-brothers had the same given name. The record of George WIlliam Gordon is now pretty well known to present day Jamaica. The name of Richard Hill deserves no less distinction. He was sent to England on a special mission to further his father's spiritual legacy: the removed of civil disabilities from free coloured people in Jamaica. He was a distinguished amateur naturalist; and of such assistance to the famous naturalist Phillip Gosse, that the latter associated him in the authorship of his book: "A Naturalist's Sojourn in Jamaica" (1851), In or about 1856, Richard Hill delivered three lectures at the Institute of Jamaica, later published in Book form and entitled "Lights and Shadows of Jamaica History". It is out of print; and is so informative and scholarly that it would merit re-printing. It deals at length with the illegitimacy question; and with the great contribution of the Missionaries to Jamaican culture. Richard Hill was a member of the Jamaican Privy Council.

The use of the words '"West India" and "Jamaica" in adjectival form may be noted. The custom is too well-rooted in Jamaica to be scoffed at. "Jamatca" History was used without reproach by the cultured Richard Hill and his distinguished publisher James Gall.

After tracing the history of the Marriage Laws, Hill remarked that "Concubinage, being without discredit, obtained respect and was recognized without scandal".

Apart from faithful concubinage, there have been many instances of the stigma of barrenness being removed while relative chastity was preserved by the limitation of the maternal reproach to one child. Many such children (of a family nurse or upper domestic) were cherished, guarded and guided, and equipped for gainful employment by more conventionally placed matrons.

Montego Bay has always abounded in bathing beaches. Beyond the Fort House of the Rodriques's, there was a Ladies' Bath House, protected from sharks and barracoutas by a low wall, over which was a shingled roof. I remember being taken there while young for a bath by a very dignified lady who took her bath in a nightgown. Like pyjamas, bath-suits for men or women was a much later innovation.

Beyond the little used ladies' bath house, lay Christy's Rock, so called from the rock Jutting out into relatively deep water. Christy's Rock provided an ample beach for those who did not seem to qualify socially for Doctors' Cave. Doctors' Cave had no bath house facilities; nor had Christy's Rock or the extensive beach of black sand at the other end of the town. There were a few addicts of the Doctors' Cave. Clothes were discarded on rock or bush; and one took the track through the lowlying shrubs to the steps hewn out of the rock which led past exiguous beaches to the slightly less exiguous beach of the Doctors' Cave, which was formed by an overhanging rock from which the venturesome might safely dive at high tide into the clear water below.

Both Dr. McCatty and my Father took a daily bath at the Cave, the latter leaving the store in the buggy about 8.30 a.m., quickly, on arrival shedding his clothes and proceeding down the stone steps to the Cave. After immersion and a quick rub of the fine white sand, he resumed his clothes, and back into the buggy, all so quickly that, failing to keep pace, I was sometimes left behind; for he had to be back in quick time to the store. The athletic Dr. Mc-Catty, usually taking his bath much earlier in the morning, had a short way with learners. He threw them out head foremost and made them swim in. In later years I was commissioned by the Bath Committee to arrange with Boysie the Doctor's eldest son, what would be a sufficient competence for him, to be given by the Bath Committee in gratitude to his Father for the gift of the Cave to the Bath Club. Boysie had been a premature baby. Dr. McCatty described his treatment as "turning him out to pasture". The results were excellent. Boysie grew up strong and as athletic as his father.

CAUSERIES.

The Jewish Book of Morning Prayers (Rothschild) opens with a reflection that the Christians find somewhat surprising: "Another day has passed, another step toward the tomb". Properly understood, however, this is not a confession of pessimism, but an exhortation to live in eternity; which by and large forms the basic thesis of all Religion. One finds it in Indian Philosophy, the matrix of the Religions of the West. It finds explicit expression in the spiritual basis of life, a conviction common alike to Yogi and Catholic, and of course to all mystics. Why then, with this common basis, so many variations of religious belief? It seems that man may be likened to an open vessel or crucible of varying shapes and shades, surrounded by all the spiritual and material wealth of the world which more or less (unless inhibited) automatically infiltrates the crucible, and necessarily (to the observer and to the man himself) assumes the various shapes and shades of the crucible, which are nothing more or less than the subjective elements in Man himself. Indian Philosophy appreciates or admits the subjective more clearly than does Western Religion. Indeed Western Religion, in all its varieties, seems to be built on the complacency of certitude, by no means admitting the subjectivity of the mystic vision. Today, even a Scientist may admit that life occurs in material organizations and is manifested in processes, life itself is something additional and different, neither material process nor organized matter, something that cannot be isolated or examined in itself. Here is a thesis supported by some few biologists, by many philosophers and by most theologians. The latest compendious American work on the introduction to Biology therefore leaves the question an open one; for Science as a whole does not admit what cannot be subjected to the physical test.

MEMORIES AND REFLECTIONS.

In the January number, mention was made of Dr. A. J. McCatty Junior. The Boy showed early promise and interest, driving around with his father on his visits to Patients. He graduated in medicine and surgery at Bellevue in the United States, returned to Jamaica in the 1880s, and spent the rest of his life ministering to a large loving and beloved clientele, finding time also to run a dairy farm at Lapland, near Catadupa. He also kept a drug store and dispensary and a private Sanitarium. So far as I knew, he was the first medical man in Jamaica to own an X-Ray machine (of sorts) and also to perform successfully the delicate operation on the facial nerves for the very painful tic douloureux. He had many useful and original ideas for countering the mosquito menace and for feeding cattle and for meeting the menace of the citrus black fly, with black ants as a predator.

Dr. McCatty's partner, George Thompson, was also a very kindly and distinguished medical practitioner and surgeon. Allowing himself to put on too much weight, he succumbed to the virulent 1918 epidemic of influenza. In that epidemic, the victims were mostly those who had allowed themselves to develop much adipose tissue; the lean ones more often escaped, so also those in contact with Cinnamon in field or factory, as in the Cinnamon factory in London or the Cinnamon groves in Dominica. Today Langdale's Essence of Cinnamon is an almost sure preventative of a Cold. From Dominica also we secured a parasite which cuckolds the nest of the fiddler beetle which attacks our Citrus trees. Alas! however, the Jamaican authorities are devotees of dieldrin; and regard biological control as unattainable.

Montego Bay bread and biscuits were distinctive and excellent, of various shapes and texture and uses, the famous Pomona or large ships' biscuits and the svelte tea biscuits (affected by dyspeptics) garnished with aniseed, and a cocoa-bread, folded and crusty, with plenty of butter in the folds, and the bread with plaited pig tails at both ends. The two important bakery proprietors were Salmon and Reuben, each of whom had about four children and built up big businesses.

Ivor Levy (brother-in-law of the Misses Scott, school teachers) kept the largest drug store. He developed nerves, for which Dr. McCatty recommended gentle exercise in the form of horseback-riding. As a druggist, he was probably entitled to be excused from serving on the jury; but his substantive argument, as he presented himself before Judge Lumb, was the state of his nerves. The irascible Judge curtly refused the application. Ivor, trying to explain, went forward, automatically moving his arm jerkily, but, instead of words, came a hoarse "ho! ho!". "Take him away! Take the man away", shouted the terrified Judge. The dyspeptic and irritable Judge reminded me of the egregious Thomas Carlyle, the so-called "Sage of Chelsea", but more famous in Jamaican history for his "Nigger Dialogues" and his preposterous attack on the memory of George William Gordon, the draft of which may be seen in the West India Reference Library. (I hope Teacher Searchwell doesn't read these Comments; for they will grievously offend his susceptibilities for the purity of the English language, which I habitually defile (nevertheless in good company) with my adjectival use of "Montego Bay", "West India" and "Jamaica", as did Hickeringill (1661), Hans Sloane (1707), Sir Patrick Browne (1756) et al).

I have early recollections of our morning walks out Barnett way, past canefields with arrowing canes (for the sugar cane habitually arrowed in those days; and mighty useful the "cane-arrows" were to us for our "breeze-mills", decked with rosettes of varicoloured tissue paper). By the roadside banks reclined the East Indian labourers redolent with coconut oil. (I wonder if they still ceremoniously conduct their "Hussays" in procession for final immersion in the sea). Beyond Barnett or Catherine Hall was the water-wheel sugar factory of Catherine Mount, belonging to John Parkin. (Incidentally, it was through Archibald Parkin--an illegitimate son of John Parkin, himself a son of the prior proprietor, the older John Parkin--that I had the inestimable privilege of visiting Catherine Mount, drinking "cold liquor" (the liquid boiled sugar), and seeing that rare phenomenon, a really antiquated sugar estate. Archibald was a nice boy, sent to York Castle by his father, where I got to know him. Alas! after leaving school. Archibald's mentality took the expensive form (as it did with a few of my other acquaintances) of legal perversity, or an inclination to imaginary grievances, to be sublimated only by resort to expensive litigation--expensive because, while some of them conducted their own litigation, they had invariably to pay the costs of the other side.

In Jamaica in the early 1880s, there were about 200 sugar factories, of many "Heinz varieties", most of their making Muscovado and Wet Sugar (which are incidentally the only nutritious forms of sugar which retain the valuable molasses element, unrefined). There were few centrifugal or vacuum pans, and others varying from common process to Wetzel Pan, Aspinal Pan, Steam Clarifiers, Open Pans, Open Battery of Boilers, Helical Pans, Old Boilers Ranger Cured, and such like. In St. James alone, there were twenty seven little sugar factories; and in or near Montego Bay, there were Fairfield, Catherine Hall, Catherine Mount, Providence, Ironshore, Rose Hall. The proliferation of sugar estates has given place in our day to the proliferation of hotels. In the 1920s, I met in the woods near Boston the father of a friend, who told me that he had some twenty five years earlier been sent by the Boston or United Fruit Company to take photographs in Jamaica, so that that place might be featured by them as a tourist resort. Times change; but the human habit of exploring resources for gain or sustenance never changes. The history of mankind pivots around what man does for a living, his business and his recreation.

The "Barracks" in Montego Bay situate on an eminence to the West of the Creek, was the place for cricket matches, fairs, &c; and there had once been an "Exhibition" there with toboggan slide and all. There too at a Cricket Match, Edgar Turnbull had lifted a ball for six, which landed squarely on the eyeball of my brother Edmund, who was standing well out of bounds under a mango tree. It was certainly an unhappy coincidence, from which, however, the patient and the eye seemed to recover after a couple of weeks. The Barracks building at the time housed the Public Works Department, later Leader's Secondary School, which still later was located at Spring Hill, formerly the Rerrie's residence and later a premature or ill-placed Hotel.

At the foot of the Barracks was the turret which housed the Spring which was the source of the Montego Bay water supply. To the Greek, the housewives, certainly the Jewish ones, sent daily for drinking water, which was supposed to have magical quality, and no wonder, because within the mysterious Turret mermaids traditionally lived. Long after the water-pipe system was laid on, we habitually sent daily to the Creek for our drinking water. The water which issued in two spouts from the turret unless intercepted, wandered along the bed of the Creek, as I suppose it still does, in a lazy stream to the Sea.

Cricket Clubs have been established in Jamaica from of Old. In my young day, the Blake C.C. of Montego Bay was famous in cricket annals, with its fast-bowler, the gigantic Knibb and dear old Tam Gray, who had the uncanny knack of removing the bales like pie-crust. The Farquharson team, comprising all-Farquharson brothers and cousins, played against the Blake C.C. at the Barracks.

The Union Street home was plain and simple, but commodious. A long verandah the width of the house, overlooked the street to which it led by a gate at either end, which one reached by a few stairs. The house was partly timber, partly brick nog or Spanish walling. Timber, as was customary in Montego Bay, and even in other parts of the island, was decorated and preserved by a coating of the Montego Bay whitesand, thrown by hand on the paint work. Within the house, was the customary arm-chair bath-tub; outside, the detached pit closet. In the bedroom also the large mahogany arm-chair commode. Detached terrace bath came in with the public water pipes. The American bath-tub followed after the turn of the century, with sanitary conveniences within the house. The detached kitchen long remained; but at our home, a spacious annex pantry was added, and about the same time a large ice-box, when the Ice Plant was established in Montego Bay. This also heralded the introduction of carbonated drinks. Alec McCatty (half brother to the young Doctor of the same name) owned the aerated-water factory, but lost interest in it when it began to pay. He was a complete child of nature and a most fascinating companion, exuding the kindliness so typical of Montego Bay. He often planted the seed of the fruit he ate. In our yard was a thirty-foot deep well with pump attached, but seldom used. Later it formed the pit for the sanitary installation. On the lane-side of the holding was an old two-storey building, which still houses the last descendant of my eldest sister, to whom the Union Street house eventually passed and from her to her delightful daughter (now also deceased). It was not an unusual sight to see in Montego Bay a moveable house being transported by low-hung trolley drawn by men from one site to another. Some found it an inexpensive and speedy way of "adding to the house". Such an addition might cost £40 or £50, perhaps less; for it was a long time before the construction of a twenty-foot square room cost as much as £100.

Miss Tongue, a very old lady, kept a small school of a dozen or so children at one shilling per head per week at the top of the lane which led past our house. At about the age of eight I was attending that school. We took our lunches with us, and there was brisk inter-change, the most popular in exchange being the nutritious wet-sugar sandwiches which a poor Widow lady provided for her two girls. I must have moved on at about nine years of age to the school at the Long Store kept by Miss Annie Scott and her elder sister, the less severe or more indulgent Miss Bess, who was a very popular hearer of lessons. It was she that took me in the final oral examination in English History in which I got 100%. (Was it the kindness of dear Miss Bess or the proficiency of a budding student of history?).

The years 1885 and 1886 were sad ones in our home. We children had already been through an interregnum, where, in retrospect, it seems to me that I had successively lived in the upstairs of the old Arcade, then with my grandparents, and later with the kindly Miss Maggie Rowe at Market Street, where I remember my Father visiting us specially on a Friday evening to read the evening prayers at the pre-Sab-bath gathering. He was a fast reader; but it was made clear to us that the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork, and that the Lord was our Shepherd and we. would not want. Later, was my sojourn with the kindly Mrs. Lewis Rodriques at the Fort House, as I convalesced from a bout cf typhoid fever. It was typhoid that carried off at the age of nine my colourful brother Samah (from eating green plums, my Nana assured me, probably as a parable for disciplinary purposes, for there was the identical plum tree in our yard). In July 1886, my step-Mother died. I was seeing too much of death and burial in much of their details. My beloved grandfather had left us in 1884; and Uncle Samah Corinaldi's funeral procession was visible from our verandah in 1886.

It was from the large window on the landing of the staircase overlooking the Sea at the Fort House that I saw the 1886 hurricane in operation and actually or in imagination saw the little coastal steamer, the Woodburn, hurtled across the roadstead to its resting place far to the west, where it remained and mouldered for many years. I remember the affectionate care which Mrs. Lewis Rodriquez gave me, her magnificent contralto voice, her little Topsy by the side of her rocking chair, sometimes rubbing her head or feet or fanning her. I now wonder whether Mrs. Lewis was related to the famous English Jewish singer, Leon, who left England when excommunicated from the London Synagogue, because he had imprudently taken part in Haydn's "Messiah" on a Christian Stage in Garrick's company, as related in Roth's History of the great London Synagogue. Before her marriage, Mrs. Lewis had been a Leon.

Of the 1886 hurricane, the record reports that there had been flood rains in June and a cyclone in August, destroying banana cultivations, probably the first major disaster to the budding banana export industry which was already making an impact on the economic life of the country and the social and economic life of the peasantry. In the early 1880s, we find a large St. Mary landowner, Bam Da Costa, the owner of Quebec, first reproaching a peasant for his imprudence in putting five acres into Bananas, but later co-operating with Hon. George Solomon (father of George Seymour) in establishing 500 acres of bananas at Quebec. (I was to meet George Solomon in or about 1897, when he tried to persuade me to investigate the supposedly large "Adolphus Fortune" to which my family were supposed to be heirs. I did investigate, got an immense amount of interest in tracing the famous Adolphus family all over Europe; but was satisfied that the fortune--some New Jersey Shares--was worth only £2,000, that we could not be in the direct line unless Dr. Joy (Joseph) Adolphus, physician to Frederick the Great of Prussia, had either come to Jamaica or had a brother of the same name who did, that if we were in the direct line, my Father's share of the fortune would have been only £25. Nevertheless I had an immense amount of fun in the investigation into the family history; but alas! all my notes were destroyed in the fire of 1907; and (more alas!) I find it impossible any longer to get searching service at Spanish Town--a great pity for I have a newly found Cousin in South Africa, a Research-Journalist, and all my and her attempts to get the searches into our family history in Jamaica have proved fruitless. Is it any wonder that I sigh for the simple old days of speedy and efficient service.

But to return to Bananas, as far back as the 1880s Pat Johnstone (father of the famous Charlie Johnstone) was pioneering with Bananas sent by schooner from Mosquito Cove to New Orleans. The gros michel (introduced from Martinique by Pouyatt and called in Hanover and St. James "goyawk"--"go-to-New-York") was the choice banana both for home consumption and export. It fell victim to the foul "Panama Disease" which Sir Albert Howard assured me twenty-five years ago was caused by humus-depletion in our native soil accelerated by addiction to excess application of or reliance on chemical fertilisers. The Panama Disease was first detected by H. Q. Levy (son of the charming and distinguished J. H. Levy of Brown's Town). So far as I know, no one has determinedly tried the compost treatment for Panama Disease; nor will .the Authorities add to their orthodox research facilities that of the school of organic husbandry. As I write, there is today's (December 29) Harold Ashwell's thought provoking letter in the Gleaner, which indirectly raises questions relating to our economic policies.

Reflecting on my old school days and on the agricultural products and animal and human life in one's daily experience, it seems to me that the wonder is not that there are so many (but that there are such few) deformities. A deformed Sweet-sop (Sugar Apple), for example, is probably due to incomplete pollination (the busy bee never gets near the unattractive blossom); but there are many other causes of deformity; and lucky the entity that escapes all of them.

In 1886 I was sent for "change of air" to my Aunt and Uncle, the Edmund Harts, who lived at Blenheim, up the road from the Laughlands Post Office, a few miles from St. Ann's Bay. My previous experience of the countryside had been at Hunt's Ville, six miles from Montego Bay, at the age of six, where I had one of my many disturbing dreams. I am afraid that dreams indicate lack of deep sleep, and therefore lack of perfect relaxation in sleep; but that is another and perhaps interesting story.

I went by buggy to St. Ann's Bay with the newly married couple, Charlie de Pass and Louisa Rodriques, third daughter of the Lewis Rodriques's. The eldest was a 1ovely woman, who married the part-time Jewish Hazan, Samah Corinaldi, a son of old Samah. The road to the Laughlands shop and post office ran between a Canefield, which supplied sugar cane to Richmond or Llandovery Estate. The Harts' Nana took us for our afternoon walk straight to the Laugh-lands Shop Where the shopkeeper also kept the local Post Office. There, buying water crackers at four for a farthing, we were given by way of perquisite the right to dip our crackers into the barrel of muscovado sugar free of charge. The great feature at Blenheim which struck me with delight (in contrast to the slow moving and exiguous Creek in Monetgo Bay) was the abundance of running water, gurgling over rocks in the river by the road, providing a rustic bath-house for us over a local waterfall at Blenheim, running in a long viaduct to the old abandoned sugar works haunted by a mysterious Major Light, and the broad river, spanned by a bridge, which took the boys from their bachelor quarters to the main dwelling house, especially for a taste of the delicious desserts. There were the new delights of poultry; the ducks sailing down the viaduct and the Plymouth Rocks and Leghorns carefully tended by my young Cousin Teddy. Fifty years later I visited Blenheim. It had disappeared: no house, no river, no running water.

I am unable to pinpoint when electric light was introduced into the home. But I remember the kerosene lamps long past 1888: a fire averted by hurling lamp and tablecloth through the window, the fiavour of kerosene oil in the icecream, someone handling a kerosene lamp and tending the making of the ice cream. A three pence worth of ice was still being bought daily to cool the drinking water.

It must have been in 1888, or perhaps in 1887, that I left Miss Tongue for Miss Annie Scott's School. It was a large school for boys and girls. The eldest was Edith Hudson (who married Sharpe of Kerr & Co., son of Rev. Sharpe). There was her sister Hilda Hudson (who married the blind Inspector Rivett) and my lifelong friend and Client Charlie Hudson (whom I was to meet again at York Castle High School). The Hudsons lived under the care of Aunt or Grandmother in a tall two-storey house, near a blacksmith's shop toward the Creek. There was a vital Essie Salmon (who married the Irish Inspector of Police, O'Sullivan) and her younger sister (who married Dr. Vernon of York Castle, a wonderful character and a schoolboy's hero), the angelic Nellie Legoe, daughter of the Captain of Kerr's Pomona, the kindly and competent Carby Hill, who initiated me into the mysteries of arithmetic, Chottie Rodriques (a thorough Leon with her lovely neck and shoulders, who married the United Fruit Company Manager, Smith, who sold out his business to them on becoming Manager, and was short-changed by the Company, giving rise to an interesting point of law, decided against Smith. Miss Annie staged at the Trinity Church Schoolroom the play of "The Death of Cock Robin", where I made one of my infrequent appearances on the Stage. ("All the Birds of the air went a sighing and sobbing, when they heard of the death of poor Cock Robin. Who saw him de? I said the fly with my little eye, I saw him die. All the birds . . . "). After some happy years, I was to leave Miss Annie's at the age of eleven and a half for York Castle High School, with a good grounding in the three Rs, and having got as far as the Blue Bells of Scotland at the Piano, and, for some mysterious reason, taking lessons on the violin from the talented Collymore, distinguished Clerk of the Parochial Board of St. James, for many years under the Chairmanship of my Father.

At Miss Annie's, I was perforce introduced into an early study of comparative religion. For, from the Jewish milieu, I found myself in the midst of mysterious talk of Christ, sin and salvation.

It was in these days that I found myself with a tricycle, the seat of which was a glorious horse, the machine having frequent recourse to the blacksmith's shop, near by the Hudson's home. Bicycles had not yet come in, our first glimpse of one was a penny-farthing contraption which a man had ridden over from Kingston. I remember too my Father for a short time riding a sort of armchair tricycle, quite a de luxe affair, which did not last long. I think it was sent to us by my godfather Henry Reuben of Falmouth. He was once in partnership with my Father, he in Falmouth, my Father in Montego Bay. They were ill-suited as partners (or perhaps not), for the one was a pessimist, the other an optimist. "What am I to do, Sammy?" wrote Henry. "D. Q. Henriques's bill is due and I have no money". "You sent .them the first of exchange, last month. Send them the second of exchange", my Father characteristically replied. The partnership was of short duration. I still correspond with a dear Cousin, Rose, age at time of this writing, well over ninety-nine years. Henry Reuben's widow and her dear daughter, who live in the remote Catskill Mountains of New York. I fell in love with Rose at first sight in January 1890. My age then, eleven and a half years.

CAUSERIES

One may hope that the technique and design of Volume 6 of the Comments are now tolerably clear. Essentially, they comprise memoirs, seeking to present a picture, as it appeared to a contemporary, o£ life and conditions in the old days ranging from eighty to twenty five years ago. But, so that paying subscriptions may be induced, wider historical events and conditions are tagged on, Paying subscriptions are essential, because gross proceeds go equally between four very worthy institutions in this area: The local Hyacinth Lightbourne Visiting Nursing Service, The salvation Army Hanbury School for Children, Elizabeth House of Mandeville for gentlefolk, and the United Manchester Association. That will explain why free distribution of the Comments is somewhat niggardly. The varying opinions of subscribers are welcomed. Some think that 10/- per year is high and a sign of gross inflation. Some think that the important questions of nutrition and the proper care of the soil are irrelevant in a quasi-historical magazine and should be omitted. For my own part, I have always been satisfied with 5% of good value among a welter of ninety-five percent of material above my head or beneath my dignity. But tastes and opinions differ. Otherwise, how so many righteous or knavish, wise or foolish, good or bad.

MEMORIES AND REFLECTIONS.

It seems to me in retrospect that my Father had three well-defined designs for living and for the care of a family. Firstly, the business was a living entity, which had to be kept intact and sustained. To further this, he was meticulous in his care of details. With this assured, the over-all picture would take care of itself. Secondly, the boys must be educated so as to equip them to be themselves self-sustaining and productive. Thirdly, the Widow and daughters must be assured of shelter. As to the first, he worked on the plan of reasonable and moderate profits based on quick and adequate turnover and stoppage of leakages. As to the third, he provided two real estate settlements, one, after the death of his second wife, to provide for the daughters of the first and second marriages, the other for the Wife and daughters of the third marriage. As to the former, he settled the Union Street house, where we were to live for many years, on my two sisters of the whole blood and my two half-sisters of the second marriage in equal shares. With the progressive appreciation in value of real estate, this property became most useful for the line of my eldest sister, on whom it eventually devolved partly by purchase of the other shares. The latter settlement left the lands of a later purchase to his third wife, for life, with remainder in tail female among her three daughters with the income between them for their lives. The story of the one hundredfold appreciation in value of a part of this property over a period of 75 years and the interesting impact of generally half-forgotten laws of Jamaica relating to the barring of estates tail in Jamaica, will be related in due chronological sequence. The subsequent history of the Union Street House, and the impact on its fortunes of another abstruse aspect of Jamaican Real Estate Law, will also be related in due chronological sequence. The discerning will note in these memoirs a thread of legal miscellany (as well as legal whimsicality) which runs through Jamaican legislation, some of it showing unexpected prevision and legislative compendious succinctness among the early legislators, some of it evidencing startling carelessness, ignorance and neglect (or supineness) as well as undue prolixity among more modern legislators and lawyers.

There was one feature of those afternoon tricycle rides of mine that was somewhat embarrassing. The dinner hour lay between five and six, to accommodate my Father's homecoming from the store. It was difficult for me to fit in my afternoon activities to this rigid schedule, and there was my Father's gentle admonition that the home was not a hotel. A stepmother is traditionally a difficult bridge between the past and the present. My four sisters probably presented a problem, aged 16, 11, four and two. For while among the lower animals, jealousies first arise between the males, older and younger, the reverse takes place among human beings, and jealousies arise over household management and control between the females, older and younger. In our case, the problem was solved, first by the kindly outlook of, the stepmother; secondly, in two years my extremely affectionate eldest sister married and moved to the adjoining parish of Hanover. In a couple of years after that, her next younger sister (a girl of outstanding strength of character) tagged after her and took over the care of the coming children (actually as governess). The older of the younger daughters was lovely in face, full of sentiment and of fine physique, but unpredictable. In due course, as the third family began appearing on the scene, all dichotomous problems solved themselves or were solved by migration or marriage. As for myself, the second stepmother, like the first, took me over and lavished on me care and affection. No longer was I allowed to have anything but the best material from the Store for my clothing. Indeed a wedding suit of blue melton, with a tunic inletted with white flannel, crossed with bars of gold braid, &c., &c, carefully packed in my trunk when I pushed off for York Castle, was kept by me as an embarrassing secret at the bottom of my trunk, to be speedily given away on my return home, as had been my earlier velvet suit.

January 1890, saw my Father taking my brother Edmund (age between 15 and 16) and myself (age 111/2) by buggy through Falmouth and Brown's Town to York Castle High School, seven miles up the road from Claremont, which still clung haphazardly to the name Fingerpost. We stopped in Falmouth to visit my Aunt Angie, my late Mother's sister and therefore my Father's sister-in-law, Angela by name and nature. She must have sent out, as she always did, to buy a pound of meat to cook a luscious steak for us. At a certain spot in the road in the St. Ann mountains, children always came down in rags begging, and we distributed coppers. We always looked out for those children on our trips, and wondered that any children should be so poverty-stricken. At another spot we carefully hid chicken-bones, relics of our repast, against the time when we might find them again on the return or on another journey. Between Montego Bay and Falmouth, we had had to make a short detour over beach land covered by seawater. At Bengal Hill, we all got out to lighten the load for the horses. We must have changed horses at Brown's Town, and we may have made the usual two day journey a one-day one, and my Father may have left us on the return journey that evening, or maybe we slept at Brown's Town and continued the journey next morning, which was the usual way of doing that long trip, for to St. Ann's Bay alone was a sixty mile trip, while through Stewart Town and Brown's Town was a few miles shorter but a more mountainous road. Then there was the undulating country through to Claremont and then the long and arduous climb of seven miles to York Castle, through Aldington and Bonneville. That night, after my Father's departure, my brother and I found ourselves in Mrs. Murray's garden at the top of the long steps doing a silent nostalgic weep. Edmund had had previous experience of school away from home at Morrison's Collegiate in Kingston. I imagine that it was to keep me company that he was sent to York Castle. I imagine also that the good Dr. McCatty must have had a hand in advising the mountains for me, for I have never functioned on more than two cylinders in Montego Bay. My recollection is that I saw little of Edmund at York Castle; he remained for only a term or two; he was anxious to get to work He was in the Fourth Form, and I in the First, although soon transferred to the Second. He had a remarkable verbal memory. The first inkling he gave me of this was repeating one of the mnemonics for Latin genders: "Common are to either sex, artifex and opifex, conviva, vates, advena, testis, civis, incola . . ." He was in the Old Dormitory, and apparently a great favourite of the very kindly oldish Matron, Dora. Furthermore, he kept senior company: Todd of the Sixth, Herbie Cox of the Fifth and Fatty Harry Stephenson. He appeared to be involved in the incident, which the swineherd Israel announced in stentorian tones: "Mass Fatty, Mass Fatty! Couldn't ah been you deh kill de pig". Apparently they were in search of meat for their pumpkin soup.

In the Second Form with me were Percy Abraham, Ken Pringle, John Dodd and my embarrassing kind Cousin, Cooper Reuben from Falmouth, who insisted on corruptly and surreptitiously coaching me during class.

York Castle lay at an elevation of 3,000 feet above sea level. One could look across to the Blue Mountain Peak or on moonlight nights down to a sea of fog in Rhoden Hall. One night I saw a magnificent lunar rainbow; and another night prompted the Science and French Master, Vincent Lockett, to give me his views on life after death.

The Long steps showed up miles away as a long white line with a full stop at the end: the lower bathhouse and tank. It was at this bath house that the Governor, Rev. W. Clarke Murray saw the small boys of a Saturday morning well soaped and hosed them with a stirrup pump. There was a Screw Pine Tree at the end of the Long Steps, which prompted the mischievous Jim Hart to pin the blossom (very much like a sheep's tail) on Hector Joseph's behind; and Hector Agamemnon (part Boy, part Master, awaiting the Scholarship results) was of immense dignity. There was a great to do.

The old house, which appears to have been the original Great House of the Coffee property, formerly owned by a French family of the name of Curtis, was built on the side of a lofty hill. In the basement, called the Corridor, were housed the First Form and the storeroom and Post Office which were managed by Mr. Murray's Sister, whom the Boys called Prascovie. From the Corridor, steps led up to the Boys' Dining Room on the first floor. Beyond the Dining Room were the remote quarters occupied by the Murray family with children Edith, Edna, Arthur, Percy, Lena and the curly headed Reggie. The eldest, Ernest, had in the year 1888 won the Jamaica Scholarship, having been placed "above the first in the world" in the London Matriculation, and was visiting his parents in the nineties after qualifying in medicine, and before settling down as Health Officer in Kingston.

A passageway separated the Boys' Dining Room from kitchen and bakery, which were apparently somewhat vulnerable; for one day Charlie Hudson appeared there from, inviting me to share a pudding, intended elsewhere, which he had captured from an inattentive cook. On the second or topmost floor was the old dormitory, where Dora held court and seemed to be always mending clothes. In an offset from the stairs leading to the Old Dormitory lay the Infirmary, seldom occupied as such, but mostly as Dr. Murray's Study, from which he sometimes emerged to hold up an admonitory right hand with characteristically pointed fore and little finger, and make a dignified pronouncement: "Gertie, not Goethe", he corrected the ebullient Phil Hart.

Below Dr. Murray's study was a tiny room called the Library, to which Sixth and Fifth Form Boys had access. It housed a few old books like Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, but its chief attraction was the English Magazines: the Speaker, the Liberal, and the Spectator, the Conservative Paper, the Illustrated London News, Punch and the Strand Magazine and William Stead's Review of Reviews. Across from the Boys' Dining Room, a covered way led to Osborn House, a large two storey building. On the lower floor were all the Class Rooms other than the First, and to one side at the back was a small locker room in which we stored Oranges and Avocado Pears from Rhoden Hall. To the East lay the new Master's House, the lower Storey being occupied by Theological Students, Glasspole, and McLarty; and the upper by the new Mathematical Master, Mitchell, and the new Classical Master Samson, and later by the Mitchell family, after Mitchell had married Dr. Murray's daughter, Edith, and had also taken the place of Smallpage as headmaster. To the South, reached by a footbridge from the Osborn House level, was the "Piano-case", housing in front on the lower floor a small Boys' Dormitory; in the back some other Theological Students, among whom were Sherlock, Clark, and later Surgeon and Cresser and others. On the top floor were Masters' quarters. In the Basement was a small

Bathhouse The School was well supplied with tanks for drinking water and for the weekly bath, and the nightly footpan at each bedside. On the New Dormitory was a small bedroom, which I had the privilege in the last year of my stay of occupying as head boy, a position, which more often than not followed seniority of age, which seemed in some mysterious way, to keep parallel with scholastic attainment. I followed Stephen Lockett, and Stanley Allwood followed me.

Relative to the Playground, Osborn House stood on a higher level of some five feet, a reasonable drop for the opposing "armies" which manoeuvred around Osborn House, trying to sweep one another off the higher level. The Playground was spacious, and the scene of games in the inter-class periods. At the Southern end was the spacious main water tank, and near-by the parallel and horizontal bars and near the Great House the mammoth giant-stride, with its excellent recreational possibilities. I have never seen one anywhere else. Across from the Playground, on a lower level, which began the descent to little Bunto and Guava Piece, and the road to the playing fields and down the hill off the property, were the Stables, where I saw the Waiters and Stable-hands playing at stick-licking (or single-sticks). There is a fine picture of the game in Martinique, the finest action picture I have seen, by the French artist Brunois. His pictures of the Frenchman's view of the Negro slave girls of Martinique are an apt illustration of the maxim that Peter's account of Paul's condition reveals more clearly the state of Peter's mind than Paul's condition. At little Bunto was the village tank, which also served as a Boys' Bath House. There also were the barbecues which we used as tennis courts, often dipping a racquet in the water to tighten the strings. It seemed to work. The tank, John Lockett told me, was originally built and used as a swimming pool, but later regarded as unsanitary from the amount of pimento leaves that invariably got in it. There is an excellent composite picture of the tout ensemble of York Castle by "R. Tung, Artist" which depicts this tank with the heads of swimmers bobbing up in it. Possibly the original picture is stil1 in the possession of Lady Curphey. For I had access to it from Aldy Curphey and had a photograph taken off.

From the lower Bath House, we took the long trail, past Guava Piece to the spacious playing fields and into the heavily wooded mountains and to the intriguing caves and sinkholes. There was lancewood for bows, and ironwood for walking sticks, and milk (from which we made excellent rubber) in the five hundred acres of most interesting terrain over which we freely roamed of a Saturday, a day without any chores whatever; nor did we have any chores on Sunday.

If I were asked to state briefly "the outstanding feature of life at York Castle High School", I should say it was the air of freedom, accompanied by the urge to work. It seemed to me to carry on in glorified extension the tradition of my home life, with the activity and lively interest and companionship that were lacking in the latter