Excerpt from The Spell of the Tropics: Songs of Central and South America 've penned these verses for my own amusement, When I've been lonely on my travels wide Hearing the challenge of a muttering jungle, Or in the stillness of a bleak divide. Lacking the flowery language of a scholar, Crude in their naked telling - they won't bear The nice dissecting of a sated public, The penetration of a critic's stare. But yet they speak of men - of tales related Beside far camp-fires, through the long, long night, Each pipe aglow - a silent, list'ning circle, Revealed but dimly by the flickering light When men are stripped of modern, false conventions, And show their feelings as an open chart When sham is worse than useless, each discerning The inmost workings of the other's heart. With such-like men o'er virgin trails I've wandered, Sharing their hardened fare 'neath sun and rain, Gripping the calloused hand of truest friendship Would that I were amongst them once again Yet, if by chance some of those loyal comrades Should see these lines, and o'er one passage dwell, Then I'll have reached the hearts of those who matter, And fireside critics may go plumb to hell 'tis only those who know the wanderer's weal. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.