As is the case in all well regulated families, the Cook was the first person to greet the morning of the second day. He not only did so, but he greeted it in its extreme infancy, an instant after his own watch, had it been a repeater, would have struck midnight, and from this moment onward he manifested the liveliest interest in the growth of the new day. His impatience could scarcely be attributable to a desire to see the sun rise, for at home the Cook habitually rose at dawn, and had already an unequalled collection of sunrises in his mental portfolio. In truth, the Cook was very cold. He had smiled pityingly as he saw his companions retire each under a pair of woolen blankets, while he himself stretched freely upon his rubber sheet, with no covering whatever. Woolen blankets in July, when at midday the thermometer stood at ninety degrees in the shade!--the Cook perspired anew at the thought, and chuckled over the superior good luck which had led him to forget his blankets when he left New York, thereby materially reducing the bulk of his equipment. Woolen blankets might be necessary to the city existence of the Statesman, the Editor and the Artist, for each of the gentlemen represented professions which are notoriously cold-blooded, but as for the Scribbler--well, all scribblers come early in life to regard blankets as rarely attainable luxuries, and to depend for warmth upon their own inner man. But on this particular occasion the inner man of the Cook failed to respond to the demand made upon it. The Cook would have encouraged the inner man had he known where the expeditionary brandy was kept, but no racking of memory elicited the information desired. He scraped carefully among the ashes of his evening fire, hoping that some coals might have remained alive to kindle a new one, but the fire had been of wood too small to leave coals, and the Cook's matches were wet. He might have had dry matches, brandy--yes, and a share in the blankets themselves, all in an instant, had he but awakened either of his brother officers. But the Cook's pride exceeded in greatness even his discomfort, so he sought consolation in his own reflections, as men are always possessed to do at just such times, when their reflections are in the most shocking condition imaginable. The Cook paced the sand, hugged himself, and tried to believe that there had been no such day as yesterday, and that he had never left a blanket in New York. Then he tried to draw his rubber blanket noiselessly from the tent, to throw over his shoulders, but one side of the Purser rested upon its extreme edge, and the Purser was of the conventional English ponderosity. Then the Cook tried to revive his spirits with a song, sung softly between his teeth, but these last named gateways of sound were trembling so that the song itself became sadly demoralized. The Cook had once written a convincing essay on "The Power of the Imagination, as Exemplified by Physical Facts," and recalling this,