Another would have been stupid enough to begin at the very beginning; but I thought to myself, I can at any time tell where I live,--in fact, at the Equator, for I reside on the island of _St. John's_, which lies, as is well known, in the East Indian waters, which are entirely surrounded by the principality of _Scheerau_. For nothing can be less unknown to good houses, which keep their regular literary waste-book (the Fair-Catalogue) and their regular stock-book (the Literary Times), than my latest home product, the _Invisible Lodge_,--a work, the reading of which my sovereign should make still more obligatory on his children, and even on his vassals, (it would not expressly contradict the Recesses,) than the attending the national university. In this Lodge, now, I have placed the extraordinary pond better known by the name of the East Indian Ocean, and into which we, of Scheerau, have steered and moored the few Moluccas and other islands on which our productive business lies. While the invisible lodge was being transformed by the press into a visible one, we again prepared an island,--namely, the isle of _St. John's_, on which I now live and write. The following digression ought to be attractive, because it discloses to the reader why I prefixed to this book the crazy title, Dog-post-days. It was day before yesterday, on the 29th of April, that I was walking in the evening up and down my island. The evening had already spun itself into haze and shadow. I could hardly see over to Tidore Island,[18] that monument of fair, sunken spring-times, and my eye glanced round only on the near buddings of twig and blossom, those wing-casings of growing Spring,--the plain and coast around me looked like a tiring-room of the flower-goddess, and her finery lay scattered and hid in vales and bushes round about,--the moon lay as yet behind the earth, but the well-spring of her rays shot up already along the whole rim of heaven,--the blue sky was at length pierced with silver spangles, but the earth was still painted black by the night. I was looking only at the heavens,--when something plashed on the earth.... It was a little Pomeranian dog, who had leaped into the Indian Ocean, and was now heading full for St. John's. He crawled up on my coast and rained a shower of drops as he waggled near me. With a dog who is an utter stranger, it is still more disagreeable undertaking to spin a conversation than with an Englishman, because one knows neither the character nor the name of the animal. The dog had some business with me, and seemed to be a plenipotentiary. At last the moon opened her sluices of radiance, and brought me and the dog into full light. "_To his Well-Born_, _Superintendent of Mines_,[19] _Mr. Jean Paul_, _on_ _Free_. _St. John's_."