Page:Luther S. Livingston (Parker).djvu/18

 some belated crane the pulsing sound of whose beating wings came down to me like the whirr of the feathered angelic hosts in Eternal Paradise. In this happy and satisfied state of mind I dozed off to sleep, but for a few moments only, for soon I was rudely awakened by a not gentle rap on my head with a club the size of my arm, which raised a bump half the size of an alligator's egg, and I found myself on the sand. I had dropped from Heaven slap upon old Mother Earth. I thought the mother alligator had come out to revenge the death of her three children. But on looking into the matter and rubbing my head awhile I found that what had happened was that one of the posts of my hammock had broken off at the ground. I concluded to pass the rest of the night on board. About 2 the cook woke me with his cup of coffee and I climbed out on the roof and lay down to enjoy the breeze of the motion of the boat.'

The financial disturbance of 1893 upset the market for orchids, and before the end of that year Livingston was once more in the book business. A few months with W. R. Benjamin enabled him to become familiar with the trade in autographs, and