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Sixth
Edition Starting Out with
Programming
Logic &
Design
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Contents iii
Sixth
Edition Starting Out with
Programming
Logic &
Design
Tony Gaddis
Haywood Community College
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Contents v
Pearson’s Commitment
to Diversity, Equity,
and Inclusion
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vi Contents
Brief Contents
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xxi
About the Author xxv
Chapter 1 Introduction to Computers and Programming 1
Chapter 2 Input, Processing, and Output 27
Chapter 3 Decision Structures and Boolean Logic 103
Chapter 4 Repetition Structures 161
Chapter 5 Modules 227
Chapter 6 Functions 285
Chapter 7 Input Validation 335
Chapter 8 Arrays 353
Chapter 9 Sorting and Searching Arrays 419
Chapter 10 Files 469
Chapter 11 Menu-Driven Programs 543
Chapter 12 Text Processing 595
Chapter 13 Recursion 623
Chapter 14 Object-Oriented Programming 649
Chapter 15 GUI Applications and Event-Driven Programming 715
Appendix A ASCII/Unicode Characters 747
Appendix B Flowchart Symbols 749
Appendix C Pseudocode Reference 751
Appendix D Converting Decimal Numbers to Binary 765
Appendix E Answers to Checkpoint Questions 767
Index 783
vi
Contents vii
Contents
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xxi
About the Author xxv
vii
viii Contents
Index 783
Contents xiii
Preface
W
elcome to Starting Out with Programming Logic and Design, Sixth Edition.
This book uses a language-independent approach to teach programming
concepts and problem-solving skills, without assuming any previous pro-
gramming experience. By using easy-to-understand pseudocode, flowcharts, and other
tools, the student learns how to design the logic of programs without the complication
of language syntax.
Fundamental topics such as data types, variables, input, output, control structures,
modules, functions, arrays, and files are covered as well as object-oriented concepts,
GUI development, and event-driven programming. As with all the books in the Starting
Out with . . . series, this text is written in clear, easy-to-understand language that stu-
dents find friendly and inviting.
Each chapter presents a multitude of program design examples. Short examples that
highlight specific programming topics are provided, as well as more involved examples
that focus on problem solving. Each chapter includes at least one In the Spotlight
section that provides step-by-step analysis of a specific problem and demonstrates a
solution to that problem.
This book is ideal for a programming logic course that is taught as a precursor to a
language-specific introductory programming course, or for the first part of an intro-
ductory programming course in which a specific language is taught.
xiii
xiv Preface
Chapter 5: Modules
This chapter demonstrates the benefits of modularizing programs and using the top-
down design approach. The student learns to define and call modules, pass arguments
to modules, and use local variables. Hierarchy charts are introduced as a design tool.
Chapter 6: Functions
This chapter begins by discussing common library functions, such as those for generat-
ing random numbers. After learning how to call library functions and how to use val-
ues returned by functions, the student learns how to define and call his or her own
functions.
Chapter 8: Arrays
In this chapter the student learns to create and work with one- and two-dimensional
arrays. Many examples of array processing are provided including examples illustrat-
ing how to find the sum, average, and highest and lowest values in an array, and how
to sum the rows, columns, and all elements of a two-dimensional array. Programming
techniques using parallel arrays are also demonstrated.
Chapters 1–6
(Cover in Order)
Depend On
Chapter 15
Chapter 7 GUI Applications and
Input Validation Event-Driven
Programming
Chapter 9
Chapter 12
Sorting and Searching
Text Processing
Arrays
VideoNotes. A series of online videos, developed specifically for this book, are avail-
able for viewing at www.pearson.com/cs-resources. Icons appear throughout the
VideoNote
text alerting the student to videos about specific topics.
NOTE: Notes appear at several places throughout the text. They are short explana-
tions of interesting or often misunderstood points relevant to the topic at hand.
TIP: Tips advise the student on the best techniques for approaching different pro-
gramming or animation problems.
Supplements
Student Online Resources
Many student resources are available for this book from the publisher. The following
items are available on the Gaddis Series resource page at www.pearson.com/cs-
resources:
Instructor Resources
The following supplements are available to qualified instructors only:
Visit the Pearson Instructor Resource Center www.pearson.com or contact your local
Pearson representative for information on how to access them.
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Acknowledgments
There have been many helping hands in the development and publication of this text.
I would like to thank the following faculty reviewers:
xxi
xxii Acknowledgments
Richard J. Davison
College of the Albemarle
Sameer Dutta
Grambling State University
Norman P. Hahn
Thomas Nelson Community College
John Haley
Athens Technical College
Keith Hallmark
Calhoun Community College
Ronald J. Harkins
Miami University, OH
Dianne Hill
Jackson College
Vai Kumar
Pensacola State College
Coronicca Oliver
Coastal Georgia Community College
Robert S. Overall, III
Nashville State Community College
Dale T. Pickett
Baker College of Clinton Township
Tonya Pierce
Ivy Tech Community College
J. Shawn Pope
Tulsa Community College
Maryam Rahnemoonfar
Texas A&M University
Linda Reeser
Arizona Western College
Homayoun Sharafi
Prince George’s Community College
Emily Shepard
Central Carolina Community College
Larry Strain
Ivy Tech Community College–Bloomington
Donald Stroup
Ivy Tech Community College
Acknowledgments xxiii
John Thacher
Gwinnett Technical College
Jim Turney
Austin Community College
Scott Vanselow
Edison State College
I would like to thank the faculty, staff, and administration at Haywood Community
College for the opportunity to build a career teaching the subjects that I love. I would
also like to thank my family and friends for their support in all my projects.
It is a great honor to be published by Pearson, and I am extremely fortunate to have
Tracy Johnson as my Content Manager. She and her colleagues Holly Stark, Erin
Sullivan, Sandra Rodriguez, Wayne Stevens, Scott Disanno, Bob Engelhardt, Ishan
Chaudhary, Carole Snyder, and Mahalakshmi Usha have worked tirelessly to produce
and promote this book. Thanks to you all!
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o’clock, we continued our walk in and about and all around, until, much to
our surprise, we were taken into a cool, big courtyard, up a wide flight of
worn stone steps into the señor’s home. There we met his wife and children,
listened to beautiful native dances sympathetically played on the piano by
the señor; we rocked in the ever-present Vienna bent-wood chair, talked to
the parrot, played with the baby, and drank cocoanut milk from the green
cocoanut, and lived to drink from many more. The cocoanut, when used for
milk by these Southern people, is cut quite green, before the solid meat has
formed and when all is liquid within, and is said to be most healthful. Of
our party, the adventurous man and children liked it very much, but the
cautious woman a very little. Then we made our adieux, not without the
promise, however, that the señor would meet us at three o’clock for the trip
up the Ozama River in the ship’s boats.
All day the clouds were reeling heavily in bulky, black heaps, now and
then dropping down upon our innocent heads torrents of spattering rain. But
we were not to be discomfited by a rain-shower, for were we not prepared?
We left the ship with but one umbrella, the white one with the green lining,
but as we bade the señor “Adios,” a sudden shower called forth his best silk
umbrella. He was insistent, and there was nothing to do but for Daddy to
tuck Sister under his wing, accepting the señor’s offer, and for Little Blue
Ribbons to trot along by my side, under the Haïtien umbrella. And the green
lining proved fast green; it did not run, not a particle!
IV.
What can the señor do without his best umbrella? Will he take the black
umbrella of his wife’s aunt? No, he will not take the black umbrella of his
wife’s aunt, dear Mr. Otto, he has taken the umbrella of his wife’s sister, we
will say, to adhere to tradition; but, to tell the truth, I could never say whose
umbrella the señor borrowed, but when he appeared he was really so
beaming under the dark covering over him, that I quite forgot to ask him
whose umbrella it was.
Ah! what would the señor think if he should ever read these words?
Would he forswear the friendship? We should sincerely beg forgiveness, for
we would sooner never see the walls of Domingo again than to lose the
señor’s good-will.
Along the Ozama
Santo Domingo
I.
III.
Instead of being the dumping-ground for all the garbage of the city and
the location for unsightly warehouses, the quay at San Juan is a perfect
delight. I happened to-day to turn to a precious volume of Washington
Irving’s “Life of Columbus.” While reading along I came across a letter in
which the valiant discoverer endeavours to bring to his king some
conception of the beauty of his newly found lands; saying that he fears his
Majesty may have reason to doubt the veracity of his statements, for each
new island surpasses in beauty the one before; in fact that one could live
there for ever. Time cannot efface the noble bearing of Puerto Rico, and
although far, far removed from the picture which met the eyes of her early
discoverers, she is to-day not only from the standpoint of the picturesque,
but from the practical aspect of cleanliness and order, a place to which
every American may turn with pride.
Boat Landing and Marine Barracks, San Juan
Puerto Rico
Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.
IV.
We were in the Captain’s hands, and although Sister and Daddy were
decorously unquestioning as to where we were going and what we were to
do when we got there, Little Blue Ribbons and I couldn’t refrain from
asking, when we found ourselves clattering out of San Juan to the tattoo of
the hard little hoofs, if the Captain intended to drive us to Ponce? “Oh,
hardly, this evening,” he laughingly replied. “I thought we would merely
take a spin out a way on the military road to give you a glimpse of the
country. The madam has planned a Puerto Rican dinner for you at the
Colonial, and afterward there is to be a concert on the Plaza.” “Simply
fine,” I said, “I do so enjoy trying the native bills of fare” (but alas, for their
after effects!).
We ran down along the sea-wall, under the lattice of the stately Casa
Blanca, and came into the city; turning abruptly to the left we were about to
follow the Captain up the steep street, when I was stopped suddenly with
my whole soul ablaze with wonder, for there on the top of the hill, as if on
the very stones themselves, there rolled a great yellowish-green moon, and
about it there fell a heaven splashed with emerald and gold. There were
green and yellow and strange hues of blue all blending into a splendour
which dazzled the senses and made one feel dumb. I am so thankful that we
saw the moon before dinner. I couldn’t have looked in the face of a green
moon afterward, no, I could never have done it.
I beg of you to be as considerate of me as possible in your judgment. I
do not mean to be ungrateful to our dear hosts, or unkind or disagreeable;
but after that dinner, planned for us with so much care and pride, all I could
say was, “O Lord, have mercy upon us—miserable offenders!” We had
things to eat I had never dreamed of, and may I be spared a recurrence of
them in my future dreams! There were:
Tomatoes and peppers.
Pork chops, and peppers.
Codfish, vegetables and peppers.
Chicken and peas and more peppers and some black coffee and cheese,
and the sweetest sweets I ever tasted, with a final dessert of beans with a
sugar sauce. After dinner madam had chairs arranged on the balcony over
the Plaza. She led the way, and said the concert would be delightful in the
moonlight. But as the pepper and the various concoctions of grease and
greens and sugar and beans began to make themselves felt, I turned my
chair around, saying that I never could look at the moon any length of time,
especially a green moon. Then Sister gave me a despairing look and turned
her chair around too; gave my hand a hard squeeze, and leaning over, said:
“Mother, it’s the peppers and sweet things; do you think Daddy could get
me some Jamaica ginger?” A whispered consultation is held, after which the
Captain and Daddy disappear, and then something warm and comforting is
fixed up for Sister and me, and we decide that after all we will turn our
chairs around to face the moon, but alas, the inconstant creature had slipped
on her black hood and was scurrying off like a little fat nun. She was no
more to be seen that night.
But her displeasure does not affect the humour of San Juan, for by this
time the Plaza is filled with people making “el gran paseo” around and
around the square in true Spanish fashion.
Meantime the Plaza is being filled with chairs—rocking-chairs—which
seem to spring up out of nothing. I never saw or expect to see so many
rocking-chairs in any one place. Here the “Four Hundred” sit, having paid a
small fee for the use of the chairs, and here they rock back and forth and
back and forth in endless waves until the music begins. Some rock with the
elegant ease of the portly señora and others with the sprightly jerk of the
laughing niñita, and as seen from the veranda of the Colonial, the eyes ache
as they involuntarily follow the moving crowds circling countless times
around the improvised barricade of oscillating chairs. But the music begins,
the people are suddenly still, and out over the luminous night, still eloquent
of the retreating moon, there fall the first notes. I know that it is rank heresy
in me to acknowledge to any race but the Germans a preëminence in
musical intuition; but I shall do so in spite of all the traditions of my youth.
I believe that if the Spanish-American races could be given the skill and the
knowledge to formulate their musical ideas to such an extent as has come to
the painstaking Germans by generations of grinding, we would have greater
music—and certainly more human music—than the world has ever heard.
The Puerto Rican, as well as the Mexican, the Cuban, the Dominican, is the
natural musician; he feels to his finger-tips every vibration of sound he
utters, and he makes you feel what he does. His music is akin to that of the
wild sea-bird, it is brother to the moaning of the winds, to the wan song of
the dusky maidens in the dance—to dream sounds in cocoanut and palm-
tree groves; it is life, moving, quickening, pulsating life their music speaks,
and without life, what is the stuff we call music?
“Thank you, thank you, you have given us an evening we shall never
forget. Shall we not see you in the morning? Buenas noches.”
V.
It was high noon as Little Blue Ribbons and I left the empty Plaza and
started out with grim determination to do our duty. The streets were silent as
the sun crept over our heads and sent its burning, perpendicular rays
through the white umbrella. But that was of no consequence. We two had
made up our minds to accomplish a certain purpose, and when we make up
our minds neither man nor weather can prevail against us. We had been idle
long enough. Time and time again we had drifted to the time-ripened
Morro. Days had gone by and we lacked the energy to begrudge their
inconsequential passing, but now a time of reckoning had come. We would
have no more such idleness. Little Blue Ribbons and I had awakened on
this particular day to a realisation of our unperformed duty, and although
detained through one pretext and another all the morning, by noon we
forswore further procrastination and hurriedly left the Plaza before our good
intentions could again be lulled by inaction.
Inland Commerce
Puerto Rico
Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.
It was to the Square of Ponce de Leon we were going; and although not
sure of its exact location, we remembered a fine old church near by, and that
was our landmark.
It is strange indeed what a web of dreams the past weaves about its
heroes, however recent their careers; but when the hand of time leads us
back to the remote events of centuries gone by, we are hopelessly
bewildered by the discordant wrangling between the real and the
improbable.
Although the early companion of Christopher Columbus, the discoverer
of Florida and the intrepid voyager on many seas, the conqueror and the
first governor of Puerto Rico, and later the powerful and hated rival of
Columbus’s son, Ponce de Leon’s one unrealised hope, his tireless search
for the fountain whose waters were to contain the elixir of life, has so over-
shadowed his actual achievements by the glamour of the legendary, that his
very name has become the synonym for the stuff of which dreams are made.
Standing thus as the embodiment of the unattainable, the knight errant of
roseate hopes and undying aspirations, he has ever been, in spite of the
irascible humour given him by history, a figure from whom none could
wrest the talisman of romance.
Where are his contemporaries, where are those greater discoverers, abler
rulers, better men who thronged these alluring waters during the two
generations of Ponce de Leon’s eventful life? Dead, even in name, many of
them, or else safely embalmed in the musty pages of some old history
seldom read. But in him there was the spirit of the poet and the mystic,
which ever has and ever will appeal to the imagination of mankind and
through imagination attains immortality.
Thus it suggested much to us to find his statue in San Juan and to have
heard some one assert with an air of authority that his bones rested in the
old church hard by; all of which bore incontrovertible testimony to the fact
of his having once been an actual living personality. So we two decide
without saying a word to any one that we will make a pilgrimage to that
church of the uneasy shades and prove for ourselves Ponce de Leon’s
identity with fact.
With a feeling of affinity for the doughty old cavalier, and with half a
sigh that I can never again lift my feet with the light-hearted grace of the
little maid at my side, we wander on through the deserted streets until we
come to the square of Ponce de Leon. It looked as it had before, only much
whiter, much brighter, and oh, so silent! The church stood passively asleep;
there were only the still hot rays reflected into our faces from the sun-baked
pavement. The same, and yet not the same, was the empty square, for as we
made nearer approach we found that the pedestal upon which before the
figure of Ponce de Leon had stood with lofty bearing and haughty mien was
now but a bare block of stone glaringly white in the noonday silence with
naught but the inscription left.
The figure was gone! “Can it be that we have been dreaming, that it was
never there?” I ask, in consternation. “No, Mother, surely not, I remember
perfectly well a statue was standing there as we drove through only last
evening.” With a startled tremor I wish the place were not so deserted, I
wish some one would come, I dislike being so alone, and I wish that we had
Daddy with us. But pulling ourselves together with a frightened glance over
our shoulders, we pass the abandoned pedestal and go toward the church,
unquestioningly sure of safe sanctuary within its open door. To our
amazement we find it barred and locked. We try a side entrance; that too is
mysteriously fast; but hearing a faint sound, as of retreating feet within, we
venture a timid knock on the door. But our rappings bring no response save
a hollow echo and a momentary cessation of the footsteps.
Still hesitating as to our next move, we stand there in the white glare,
while a sensation of strange unreality creeps over us. Hesitating, but still
unwilling to relinquish the pilgrimage without further effort, we spy an
ancient iron-bound gate in the high stone wall adjoining the cathedral. We
try its rusty latch and find it unlocked. We cautiously push it open. It turns
heavily on great creaking hinges stiff from long desuetude, and swings to
after us as with an ominous sigh.
We find ourselves in the secluded corridors of an ancient cloister. The
sun still lingers on a patch of green courtyard dropped in the midst of the
shadows, and up from the luminous verdure a cool fountain plays its restful
measure. An ancient sun-dial speaks of the deathless tread of time, and in
the deeper shade of a dark recess, on tables of venerable age, huge volumes
lay, on whose yellow pages were strewn adown the wide-spread lines of the
quaint Gregorian staff, the great square notes of an ancient Latin chant.
Then,—
“On a sudden, through the glistening
Leaves around, a little stirred,
Came a sound, a sense of music which was rather felt than heard.
Softly, finely it inwound me;
From the world it shut me in,—
Like a fountain falling round me—”
My hand is held close and with wide eyes Little Blue Ribbons asks if she
may drink at the fountain. Half-refusing, half-assenting, we are about to
draw near, when from out an opening door, whence seemed to come the
music, there appeared a figure bent in contemplation and wrapped in the
shadows of the past. It was so like the statue on the square without that the
one at my side gasps, “It is he, Mother, what shall we do?” and shrinking
spellbound, I hold the dear little hand, glad to feel the human warmth of its
pressure. With dread and yet with fascination I watch the lone, sad, weary
figure, as it were the phantom of old age eternally unreconciled to the flight
of youth. I watch while it moves eagerly toward the fountain to lean
forward and drink deep, deep, with an insatiable thirst; and then with a
hopeless sigh it paces back and forth among the shadows.
I.
A FTER the long stretches of ocean, you from the North will find that
there is something positively cosy about these dear islands. You tuck
your head under your wing with the parrots at night, off one island,
and, the next thing you know, it’s morning, the sweet land-breeze steals in
through the port-hole, and you’re up with the monkeys off another island—
perhaps more enchanting than the last. Why, it seems not half the trouble
going from port to port that it is to make fashionable calls in the great city,
and such a lot more fun.
But speaking of parrots and monkeys: the only ones we have seen thus
far were some very solemn little creatures which have been brought to the
ship for sale,—poor captives, chained and unnaturally pious, sitting
alongside their black captors.
We have not heard a single bird-note since leaving the North. Is it
possible that there are no song-birds here, and in fact no birds of plumage
left about the settlements? We fully expected the latter, but not a glimpse
have we had of them,—no, not even in the forest along the Ozama, did we
distinguish a single bird-note. Can it be that the plume-hunters for our
Northern milliners have ranged through all these sunny islands? Ah, my
friends of the feather toques and the winged head-gear, what have we to
answer for? It all seems so empty without the birds where trees and flowers
grow so gladly; just as if Nature’s feast were spread to empty chairs. After
all, how fondly we do love that particular expression of creation with which
we are long familiar! My heart reaches out in homesick yearning for the
notes of our dear Northern songsters. How brutal are the details of the
“march of civilisation!”
From San Juan, Puerto Rico, to St. Thomas it was only a night’s journey,
and I am sure, had we been so disposed, we might have touched some other
islands equally lovely on the way. But there must be some time for rest,—
even though Little Blue Ribbons said she did not want to sleep (she knew
she couldn’t), and Sister thought it a great waste of valuable experience not
to make all the ports there were. Nevertheless, when morning came and the
sun was wide awake, I had no little trouble in arousing the children.
And now it came to pass that all those threatenings and fitful tears and
dire forebodings of the day before were simply whims and weather jokes.
The sea fell into a gentle calm, and on St. Thomas there never shone a
brighter sun or blew a sweeter breeze; and we realised that at last we were
under the lee of that smiling windbreak of the Caribbean—“The Windward
Islands.” Getting our anchor early, we moved from our first stopping-place,
well out in the harbour, over to the wharves; where the huge piles of coal
rose up before the port-hole, with other ranges of piles, like mimic
mountains, farther on, while we were so close to the dock that I could see
the gangway being lowered, as I bent over the sleepy little girls.
The Harbour
Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas
II.
Hillside Homes
Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas
In Charlotte Amalie
St. Thomas
III.
While some of the party were writing postal cards and letters in a cool,
flowery retreat, reached by devious shady passages and looking out into an
open court, known as a post-office, I strolled up the quiet street to the first
turning, where the cross road came to an abrupt, but very beautiful end in a
little white chapel, sheltered by waving palms. There seemed to be but one
main street, which followed the shore awhile and then went loitering off up
the hill in a most indifferent manner.
The houses, with one story in the rear and two in the front, were built on
the hillside, so that the chapel before me—well up on the slope—was
approached by a long flight of stone steps. Snow-white columns upheld the
simple portico, and the royal palms rose higher and higher from one terrace
to another, their regular trunks like stately shafts of stone, until their warm
plumes met over the golden cross. The picture, with chapel and palms and
terraces and flowers and delicately wroughtiron gateway, was so compact,
that it seemed as if some one just a little bigger than myself might tuck the
whole affair right into a pocket for a keepsake.
Turning slowly about to look for the children, I glanced through the half-
open blinds of a house on the corner, and there met a pair of very engaging
eyes, which besought me in the universal language, to come in and see what
there was for sale. The eyes belonged not to a maiden, but to a tiny, stoop-
shouldered Spanish-Danish-English woman, who fluttered about in great
excitement at the prospect of a sale. Strangers do not drop from the sky
every day in these remoter of the West Indies. I bought a piece of
needlework, and my change, in St. Thomas silver and Danish copper, was
brought me by a regal old negress, in a voluminous red calico gown,
standing out like the “stu’nsails” of a full-rigged ship, flying as her proper
colours aloft, a brilliant green and yellow bandanna. My! but she was tall—
six feet, it seemed, and she smiled all over her face with the meaningless
good-nature of her race. What teeth she had left were glistening white. By
the way, why is it that on these islands you find so many women, and not
necessarily old women by any means, but girls from fourteen up—both
white and black—with many of their teeth gone? Has the American dentist
yet untrodden fields?
Black Susan salaamed me out, and seeing Daddy and the little girls
ahead of me, I followed the clean—I repeat, clean—narrow street, as it
wound up the well-tilled hillside to “Bluebeard’s Castle.”
IV.
It was a long, hot walk, that climb, in spite of the good breeze and the
white umbrella’s shade, and we stopped a number of times on the way up to
cool ourselves, and, incidentally, to envy the carriage of the brisk and
leathery old women, who came striding past us up the hill, with great water-
cans on their heads and water-jugs in their hands, stolidly indifferent to the
hot sun and the heavy burdens they were carrying. It comes to me now that
I did not see a young negress in the whole town, but this was explained on
our return to the ship.
It was next to impossible to be keen enough to appreciate fully the
remarkable vegetation and flowers and animal life all about us. The flowers
seemed hung at the wrong end, and all the vegetable world strange and
topsy-turvy; even some insects that we saw seemed quite outlandish. For a
long time, as I sat between two rusty old cannon, dangling my feet with
most awful irreverence over Bluebeard’s fortress wall, I kept my eye on an
old bumblebee—a black and yellow pirate that bumbled of the peaceful
present and the strenuous past; but even the every-day bumblebee was twice
as big as he had any right to be, and he had the deep-drawn drone of a
sleepy country parson. Then, just as the bumblebee hummed himself out of
sight into the heart of a deep red hibiscus nodding its heavy head at me
from the top of the wall, out of the mouth of one of Bluebeard’s piratical
cannon there peeped two shining, yellow eyes in a little green body, and
they stared at me, and I stared at them, each most curious about the other,
until the inspection became rather embarrassing, and I rapped on the rusty,
weather-worn old murderer, and away scampered Mr. Eyes, back with the
ghosts and memories—all dying together. A little green lizard, with life for
a wee bit of awhile; an ancient cannon of curious shape, rusting, but
outliving a little longer; a great gray rock underneath, disintegrating piece
by piece, going back again into the universe; and an immortal soul in a
human body; are we all part and parcel of the same cosmic dust?
Twenty cannons dropped into the heavy embrasured masonry of
Bluebeard’s wall looked down with grim irony upon a pious, self-
complacent, twentieth-century gunboat, entering thus unchallenged their
own waters. Whether it was the lizard rustling among the grasses inside the
cannon, or whether it was a reawakened pirate’s ghost, I shall not venture to
assert; but there certainly came to me a whisper which translated itself into
the most disdainful reproach of our much-vaunted humanitarianism. I tried
to explain to this little voice that nowadays we had reduced the killing of
men to a science; that it was less painful to be blown to pieces by dynamite
shells from a torpedo-boat than to be hacked to pieces by a pirate’s cutlass,
therefore, more honourable, and that fighting was still necessary because
diplomacy was too young to be weaned. But from certain mysterious
sounds, very like the chucklings of an old man, I thought best to beat a
retreat. Besides there were Daddy and the little girls waving to me from the
top of the sturdy old watch-tower, so I gathered my umbrella, hat, and
basket, and put to flight the flock of geese which had been examining my
umbrella with long-necked curiosity. They, little caring for the sanctity of
my far-reaching thoughts, went hissing and squawking down the hill in a
most irate humour. I took a long breath, pinched myself to get awake, and
started up the steep tower steps.
From the top of this tower of “Bluebeard’s Castle” (kept in repair by the
Italian consul, whose residence is here), one could look out across the pretty
town to the rival fastness of old “Blackbeard,” crowning another hill of
surpassing beauty. A road, white and smooth and shaded with palms, clung
caressingly about the white-crested bay, and I longed to follow it. Yonder
another road struggled up a hillside, through sugar-cane and fruit-trees, and
tumbled off somewhere on the other side. I longed to follow that one, too.
Another, white and edged with tamarinds and oranges, wandered off
somewhere else, and I wanted to go there. But the last carriage had clattered
off, and it was too hot to walk “over the hills and far away;” so, after a long
quiet feast of the glory about us, we leisurely made the descent, and were
again among the cannon crowning the ancient parapet. We strolled along
down the steep winding highway, stopping now to trim our hats with
flowers, gathered with much difficulty from behind a prickly hedge, and
then to look with rapture upon the scene below, and again to talk about it
all. The sun beat down upon our heads, but we did not mind that, for the
cooling breeze came up from the sea, sweetly and gently, as if it loved us,
and the mountains and the earth were oh, so richly clad, and the eyes so
content with seeing and the nostrils so glad with the fragrant air!
V.
I wondered then why we Americans should not settle the matter at once
with Denmark. As I understand it, there were negotiations for the purchase
of these islands approved by General Grant, then President, in 1867; but, for
some reason, the proposed treaty with Denmark was not ratified by
Congress, and the little island was forgotten; but since the recent growth of
our navy and the necessity for its constant care of the Caribbean Sea, and
especially now that we seem destined to become sponsors to an Isthmian
canal, the island of St. Thomas comes again to the front as one of the most
desirable possessions the United States could have in these waters. The
harbour of Charlotte Amalie is so protected by mountains and guarded by
bold islands, with deep water inside, and an unimpeded channel from the
sea, that, with sufficient fortification, it could be made absolutely
impregnable, a West Indian Gibraltar, and at the same time a most valuable
and protected station for naval supplies, docks, and the like.
On the Terrace
Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas
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