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JavaScript Allongé
A long pull of functions, combinators, & decorators

raganwald
This book is for sale at http://leanpub.com/javascript-allonge

This version was published on 2014-06-19

This is a Leanpub book. Leanpub empowers authors and publishers with the Lean Publishing
process. Lean Publishing is the act of publishing an in-progress ebook using lightweight tools and
many iterations to get reader feedback, pivot until you have the right book and build traction once
you do.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
Tweet This Book!
Please help raganwald by spreading the word about this book on Twitter!
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Also By raganwald
Kestrels, Quirky Birds, and Hopeless Egocentricity
What I’ve Learned From Failure
How to Do What You Love & Earn What You’re Worth as a Programmer
CoffeeScript Ristretto
JavaScript Spessore
This book is dedicated to my daughter, Clara Maude Braithwaite
Contents

A Pull of the Lever: Prefaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i

Foreword by Michael Fogus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i
Foreword by Matthew Knox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii
Why JavaScript Allongé? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii
A Personal Word About The Recipes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv
Legend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv

Prelude: Values and Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi

values and expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi
values and identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

1 The first sip: Basic Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

As Little As Possible About Functions, But No Less . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Ah. I’d Like to Have an Argument, Please. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Closures and Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Let’s Talk Var . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Naming Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Combinators and Function Decorators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Building Blocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
I’d Like to Have Some Arguments. Again. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

2 The Recipe Cheat Sheet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

3 Recipes with Basic Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Partial Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Ellipses and improved Partial Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Unary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Tap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Maybe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

4 The Pause That Refreshes: Rebinding and References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

Arguments and Arrays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
References and Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Reassignment and Mutation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
CONTENTS

How to Shoot Yourself in the Foot With Var . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

When Rebinding Meets Recursion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
From Let to Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

5 Recipes with Rebinding and References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

Once . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
mapWith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Flip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Extend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Why? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

6 Stir the Allongé: Objects, Mutation, and State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

Encapsulating State with Closures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Composition and Extension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
This and That . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
What Context Applies When We Call a Function? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Method Decorators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

7 Recipes with Objects, Mutations, and State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

Memoize . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
getWith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
pluckWith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Deep Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

8 Finish the Cup: Instances and Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

Prototypes are Simple, it’s the Explanations that are Hard To Understand . . . . . . . . . . 119
Binding Functions to Contexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Partial Application, Binding, and Currying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
A Class By Any Other Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Object Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
Extending Classes with Inheritance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

9 Recipes with Instances and Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

Currying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Bound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Unbinding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Send . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Invoke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Fluent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
Once Again . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
CONTENTS

10 Sequence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Introduction: Compose and Pipeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160

11 New Ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164

How Prototypes and Constructors differ from Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
New-Agnostic Constructors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Another New-Agnostic Constructor Pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Mixins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Class Decorators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
Interlude: Tortoises, Hares, and Teleporting Turtles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Functional Iterators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Refactoring to Functional Iterators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
A Drunken Walk Across A Chequerboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Trampolining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

12 Recipes for New Ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

Before . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
After . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Provided and Except . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
A Functional Mixin Factory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
A Class Decorator Factory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
Iterator Recipes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217

The Golden Crema . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222

Author’s Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
How to run the examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Thanks! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
CoffeeScript Ristretto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
Copyright Notice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
About The Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
A Pull of the Lever: Prefaces

Caffe Molinari

“Café Allongé, also called Espresso Lungo, is a drink midway between an Espresso and
Americano in strength. There are two different ways to make it. The first, and the one I
prefer, is to add a small amount of hot water to a double or quadruple Espresso Ristretto.
Like adding a splash of water to whiskey, the small dilution releases more of the complex
flavours in the mouth.
“The second way is to pull an extra long double shot of Espresso. This achieves
approximately the same ratio of oils to water as the dilution method, but also releases a
different mix of flavours due to the longer extraction. Some complain that the long pull
is more bitter and detracts from the best character of the coffee, others feel it releases
even more complexity.
“The important thing is that neither method of preparation should use so much water
as to result in a sickly, pale ghost of Espresso. Moderation in all things.”

Foreword by Michael Fogus

As a life-long bibliophile and long-time follower of Reg’s online work, I was excited when he started
writing books. However, I’m very conservative about books – let’s just say that if there was an
aftershave scented to the essence of “Used Book Store” then I would be first in line to buy. So as you
might imagine I was “skeptical” about the decision to release JavaScript Allongé as an ongoing ebook,
with a pay-what-you-want model. However, Reg sent me a copy of his book and I was humbled.
A Pull of the Lever: Prefaces ii

Not only was this a great book, but it was also a great way to write and distribute books. Having
written books myself, I know the pain of soliciting and receiving feedback.
The act of writing is an iterative process with (very often) tight revision loops. However, the process
of soliciting feedback, gathering responses, sending out copies, waiting for people to actually read
it (if they ever do), receiving feedback and then ultimately making sense out of how to use it takes
weeks and sometimes months. On more than one occasion I’ve found myself attempting to reify
feedback with content that either no longer existed or was changed beyond recognition. However,
with the Leanpub model the read-feedback-change process is extremely efficient, leaving in its wake
a quality book that continues to get better as others likewise read and comment into infinitude.
In the case of JavaScript Allongé, you’ll find the Leanpub model a shining example of effectiveness.
Reg has crafted (and continues to craft) not only an interesting book from the perspective of a
connoisseur, but also an entertaining exploration into some of the most interesting aspects of his
art. No matter how much of an expert you think you are, JavaScript Allongé has something to teach
you… about coffee. I kid.
As a staunch advocate of functional programming, much of what Reg has written rings true to me.
While not exclusively a book about functional programming, JavaScript Allongé will provide a solid
foundation for functional techniques. However, you’ll not be beaten about the head and neck with
dogma. Instead, every section is motivated by relevant dialog and fortified with compelling source
examples. As an author of programming books I admire what Reg has managed to accomplish and I
envy the fine reader who finds JavaScript Allongé via some darkened channel in the Internet sprawl
and reads it for the first time.
Enjoy.
– Fogus, fogus.me¹

Foreword by Matthew Knox

A different kind of language requires a different kind of book.
JavaScript holds surprising depths–its scoping rules are neither strictly lexical nor strictly dynamic,
and it supports procedural, object-oriented (in several flavors!), and functional programming. Many
books try to hide most of those capabilities away, giving you recipes for writing JavaScript in a way
that approximates class-centric programming in other languages. Not JavaScript Allongé. It starts
with the fundamentals of values, functions, and objects, and then guides you through JavaScript
from the inside with exploratory bits of code that illustrate scoping, combinators, context, state,
prototypes, and constructors.
Like JavaScript itself, this book gives you a gentle start before showing you its full depth, and like a
Cafe Allongé, it’s over too soon. Enjoy!
–Matthew Knox, mattknox.com²
¹http://www.fogus.me
²http://mattknox.com
A Pull of the Lever: Prefaces iii

Why JavaScript Allongé?

JavaScript Allongé solves two important problems for the ambitious JavaScript programmer. First,
JavaScript Allongé gives you the tools to deal with JavaScript bugs, hitches, edge cases, and other
potential pitfalls.
There are plenty of good directions for how to write JavaScript programs. If you follow them without
alteration or deviation, you will be satisfied. Unfortunately, software is a complex thing, full of
interactions and side-effects. Two perfectly reasonable pieces of advice when taken separately may
conflict with each other when taken together. An approach may seem sound at the outset of a project,
but need to be revised when new requirements are discovered.
When you “leave the path” of the directions, you discover their limitations. In order to solve the
problems that occur at the edges, in order to adapt and deal with changes, in order to refactor and
rewrite as needed, you need to understand the underlying principles of the JavaScript programming
language in detail.
You need to understand why the directions work so that you can understand how to modify them
to work properly at or beyond their original limitations. That’s where JavaScript Allongé comes in.
JavaScript Allongé is a book about programming with functions, because JavaScript³ is a program-
ming language built on flexible and powerful functions. JavaScript Allongé begins at the beginning,
with values and expressions, and builds from there to discuss types, identity, functions, closures,
scopes, and many more subjects up to working with classes and instances. In each case, JavaScript
Allongé takes care to explain exactly how things work so that when you encounter a problem, you’ll
know exactly what is happening and how to fix it.
Second, JavaScript Allongé provides recipes for using functions to write software that is simpler,
cleaner, and less complicated than alternative approaches that are object-centric or code-centric.
JavaScript idioms like function combinators and decorators leverage JavaScript’s power to make
code easier to read, modify, debug and refactor, thus avoiding problems before they happen.
JavaScript Allongé teaches you how to handle complex code, and it also teaches you how to simplify
code without dumbing it down. As a result, JavaScript Allongé is a rich read releasing many of
JavaScript’s subtleties, much like the Café Allongé beloved by coffee enthusiasts everywhere.

how the book is organized

JavaScript Allongé introduces new aspects of programming with functions in each chapter, explain-
ing exactly how JavaScript works. Code examples within each chapter are small and emphasize
exposition rather than serving as patterns for everyday use.
Following each chapter are a series of recipes designed to show the application of the chapters ideas
in practical form. While the content of each chapter builds naturally on what was discussed in the
previous chapter, the recipes may draw upon any aspect of the JavaScript programming language.
³https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/JavaScript
 A Pull of the Lever: Prefaces iv

A Personal Word About The Recipes

As noted, JavaScript Allongé alternates between chapters describing the semantics of JavaScript’s
functions with chapters containing recipes for writing programs with functions. You can read the
book in order or read the chapters explaining JavaScript first and return to the recipes later.
The recipes share a common theme: They hail from a style of programming inspired by the
creation of small functions that compose with each other. Using these recipes, you’ll learn when
it’s appropriate to write:

1 return mapWith(maybe(getWith('name')))(customerList);

Instead of:

1 return customerList.map(function (customer) {

2 if (customer) {
3 return customer.name
4 }
5 });

As well as how it works and how to refactor it when you need. This style of programming is
hardly the most common thing anyone does in JavaScript, so the argument can be made that more
“practical” or “commonplace” recipes would be helpful. If you never read any other books about
JavaScript, if you avoid blog posts and screen casts about JavaScript, if you don’t attend workshops
or talks about JavaScript, then I agree that this is not One Book to Rule Them All.
But given that there are other resources out there, and that programmers are curious creatures with
an unslakable thirst for personal growth, we choose to provide recipes that you are unlikely to find
anywhere else in anything like this concentration. The recipes reinforce the lessons taught in the
book about functions in JavaScript.
You’ll find all of the recipes collected online at http://allong.es⁴. They’re free to share under the MIT
license.
Reginald Braithwaite⁵
[email protected]
@raganwald

Legend
Some text in monospaced type like this in the text represents some code being discussed. Some
monospaced code in its own lines also represents code being discussed:
⁴http://allong.es
⁵http://braythwayt.com
 A Pull of the Lever: Prefaces v

1 this.async = do (async = undefined) ->

2
3 async = (fn) ->
4 (argv..., callback) ->
5 callback(fn.apply(this, argv))

Sometimes it will contain some code for you to type in for yourself. When it does, the result of
typing something in will often be shown using //=>, like this:

1 2 + 2
2 //=> 4

A paragraph marked like this is a “key fact.” It summarizes an idea without adding anything
new.

A paragraph marked like this is a suggested exercise to be performed on your own.

A paragraph marked like this is an aside. It can be safely ignored. It contains whimsey and other
doupleplusunserious logorrhea that will not be on the test.
.
 Prelude: Values and Expressions
The following material is extremely basic, however like most stories, the best way to begin is to start
at the very beginning.
Imagine we are visiting our favourite coffee shop. They will make for you just about any drink you
desire, from a short, intense espresso ristretto through a dry cappuccino, up to those coffee-flavoured
desert concoctions featuring various concentrated syrups and milks. (You tolerate the existence of
sugary drinks because they provide a sufficient profit margin to the establishment to finance your
hanging out there all day using their WiFi and ordering a $3 drink every few hours.)
You express your order at one end of their counter, the folks behind the counter perform their magic,
and deliver the coffee you value at the other end. This is exactly how the JavaScript environment
works for the purpose of this book. We are going to dispense with web servers, browsers and other
complexities and deal with this simple model: You give the computer an expression⁶, and it returns
a value⁷, just as you express your wishes to a barista and receive a coffee in return.

values and expressions

All values are expressions. Say you hand the barista a café Cubano. Yup, you hand over a cup with
some coffee infused through partially caramelized sugar. You say, “I want one of these.” The barista
is no fool, she gives it straight back to you, and you get exactly what you want. Thus, a café Cubano
is an expression (you can use it to place an order) and a value (you get it back from the barista).
Let’s try this with something the computer understands easily:

1 42

Is this an expression? A value? Neither? Or both?

The answer is, this is both an expression and a value.⁸ The way you can tell that it’s both is very
easy: When you type it into JavaScript, you get the same thing back, just like our café Cubano:

1 42
2 //=> 42
⁶https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expression_
⁷https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_
⁸Technically, it’s a representation of a value using Base10 notation, but we needn’t worry about that in this book. You and I both understand that
this means “42,” and so does the computer.
 Prelude: Values and Expressions vii

All values are expressions. That’s easy! Are there any other kinds of expressions? Sure! let’s go back
to the coffee shop. Instead of handing over the finished coffee, we can hand over the ingredients.
Let’s hand over some ground coffee plus some boiling water.

Astute readers will realize we’re omitting something. Congratulations! Take a sip of espresso. We’ll
get to that in a moment.
.

Now the barista gives us back an espresso. And if we hand over the espresso, we get the espresso
right back. So, boiling water plus ground coffee is an expression, but it isn’t a value.⁹ Boiling water
is a value. Ground coffee is a value. Espresso is a value. Boiling water plus ground coffee is an
expression.
Let’s try this as well with something else the computer understands easily:

1 "JavaScript" + " " + "Allonge"

2 //=> "JavaScript Allonge"

Now we see that “strings” are values, and you can make an expression out of strings and an operator
+. Since strings are values, they are also expressions by themselves. But strings with operators are
not values, they are expressions. Now we know what was missing with our “coffee grounds plus hot
water” example. The coffee grounds were a value, the boiling hot water was a value, and the “plus”
operator between them made the whole thing an expression that was not a value.

values and identity

In JavaScript, we test whether two values are identical with the === operator, and whether they are
not identical with the !== operator:

1 2 === 2
2 //=> true
3
4 'hello' !== 'goodbye'
5 //=> true

How does === work, exactly? Imagine that you’re shown a cup of coffee. And then you’re shown
another cup of coffee. Are the two cups “identical?” In JavaScript, there are four possibilities:
First, sometimes, the cups are of different kinds. One is a demitasse, the other a mug. This
corresponds to comparing two things in JavaScript that have different types. For example, the string
"2" is not the same thing as the number 2. Strings and numbers are different types, so strings and
numbers are never identical:
⁹In some languages, expressions are a kind of value unto themselves and can be manipulated. The grandfather of such languages is Lisp. JavaScript
is not such a language, expressions in and of themselves are not values.
 Prelude: Values and Expressions viii

1 2 === '2'
2 //=> false
3
4 true !== 'true'
5 //=> true

Second, sometimes, the cups are of the same type–perhaps two espresso cups–but they have different
contents. One holds a single, one a double. This corresponds to comparing two JavaScript values that
have the same type but different “content.” For example, the number 5 is not the same thing as the
number 2.

1 true === false

2 //=> false
3
4 2 !== 5
5 //=> true
6
7 'two' === 'five'
8 //=> false

What if the cups are of the same type and the contents are the same? Well, JavaScript’s third and
fourth possibilities cover that.

value types
Third, some types of cups have no distinguishing marks on them. If they are the same kind of cup,
and they hold the same contents, we have no way to tell the difference between them. This is the
case with the strings, numbers, and booleans we have seen so far.

1 2 + 2 === 4
2 //=> true
3
4 (2 + 2 === 4) === (2 !== 5)
5 //=> true

Note well what is happening with these examples: Even when we obtain a string, number, or boolean
as the result of evaluating an expression, it is identical to another value of the same type with the
same “content.” Strings, numbers, and booleans are examples of what JavaScript calls “value” or
“primitive” types. We’ll use both terms interchangeably.
We haven’t encountered the fourth possibility yet. Stretching the metaphor somewhat, some types
of cups have a serial number on the bottom. So even if you have two cups of the same type, and
their contents are the same, you can still distinguish between them.
 Prelude: Values and Expressions ix

Cafe Macchiato is also a fine drink, especially when following up on the fortunes of the Azzuri or the standings
in the Giro D’Italia

reference types
So what kinds of values might be the same type and have the same contents, but not be
considered identical to JavaScript? Let’s meet a data structure that is very common in contemporary
programming languages, the Array (other languages sometimes call it a List or a Vector).
An array looks like this: [1, 2, 3]. This is an expression, and you can combine [] with other
expressions. Go wild with things like:

1 [2-1, 2, 2+1]
2 [1, 1+1, 1+1+1]

Notice that you are always generating arrays with the same contents. But are they identical the same
way that every value of 42 is identical to every other value of 42? Try these for yourself:

1 [2-1, 2, 2+1] === [1,2,3]

2 [1,2,3] === [1, 2, 3]
3 [1, 2, 3] === [1, 2, 3]

How about that! When you type [1, 2, 3] or any of its variations, you are typing an expression
that generates its own unique array that is not identical to any other array, even if that other array
also looks like [1, 2, 3]. It’s as if JavaScript is generating new cups of coffee with serial numbers
on the bottom.
Prelude: Values and Expressions x

Arrays look exceedingly simple, but this word “reference” is so laden with possibilities that there’s
an entire chapter devoted to discussing rebinding and references. Try typing this code out:

1 var ouroboros = [];

2 ouroboros[0] = ouroboros;
3 //=> [ [Circular] ]

You’ve just created an ouroborian array, an array that contains itself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros

They look the same, but if you examine them with ===, you see that they are different. Every time
you evaluate an expression (including typing something in) to create an array, you’re creating a
new, distinct value even if it appears to be the same as some other array value. As we’ll see, this is
true of many other kinds of values, including functions, the main subject of this book.
Prelude: Values and Expressions 1
1 The first sip: Basic Functions

The perfect Café Allongé begins with the right beans, properly roasted. JavaScript Allongé begins with functions,
properly dissected.
 The first sip: Basic Functions 3

As Little As Possible About Functions, But No Less

In JavaScript, functions are values, but they are also much more than simple numbers, strings, or
even complex data structures like trees or maps. Functions represent computations to be performed.
Like numbers, strings, and arrays, they have a representation. Let’s start with the very simplest
possible function. In JavaScript, it looks like this:

1 function () {}

This is a function that is applied to no values and produces no value. How do we represent “no value”
in JavaScript? We’ll find out in a minute. First, let’s verify that our function is a value:

1 (function () {})
2 //=> [Function]

What!? Why didn’t it type back function () {} for us? This seems to break our rule that if an
expression is also a value, JavaScript will give the same value back to us. What’s going on? The
simplest and easiest answer is that although the JavaScript interpreter does indeed return that value,
displaying it on the screen is a slightly different matter. [Function] is a choice made by the people
who wrote Node.js, the JavaScript environment that hosts the JavaScript REPL. If you try the same
thing in a browser, you’ll see the code you typed.
 The first sip: Basic Functions 4

I’d prefer something else, but I must accept that what gets typed back to us on the screen is arbitrary,
and all that really counts is that it is somewhat useful for a human to read. But we must understand
that whether we see [Function] or function () {}, internally JavaScript has a full and proper
function.
.

functions and identities

You recall that we have two types of values with respect to identity: Value types and reference types.
Value types share the same identity if they have the same contents.Reference types do not.
Which kind are functions? Let’s try it. For reasons of appeasing the JavaScript parser, we’ll enclose
our functions in parentheses:

1 (function () {}) === (function () {})

2 //=> false

Like arrays, every time you evaluate an expression to produce a function, you get a new function that
is not identical to any other function, even if you use the same expression to generate it. “Function”
is a reference type.

applying functions
Let’s put functions to work. The way we use functions is to apply them to zero or more values called
arguments. Just as 2 + 2 produces a value (in this case 4), applying a function to zero or more
arguments produces a value as well.
Here’s how we apply a function to some values in JavaScript: Let’s say that fn_expr is an expression
that when evaluated, produces a function. Let’s call the arguments args. Here’s how to apply a
function to some arguments:
fn_expr (args)
Right now, we only know about one such expression: function () {}, so let’s use it. We’ll put it in
parentheses¹ to keep the parser happy, like we did above: (function () {}). Since we aren’t giving
it any arguments, we’ll simply write () after the expression. So we write:

¹If you’re used to other programming languages, you’ve probably internalized the idea that sometimes parentheses are used to group operations
in an expression like math, and sometimes to apply a function to arguments. If not… Welcome to the ALGOL family of programming languages!
 The first sip: Basic Functions 5

1 (function () {})()
2 //=> undefined

What is this undefined?

undefined
In JavaScript, the absence of a value is written undefined, and it means there is no value. It will crop
up again. undefined is its own type of value, and it acts like a value type:

1 undefined
2 //=> undefined

Like numbers, booleans and strings, JavaScript can print out the value undefined.

1 undefined === undefined

2 //=> true
3 (function () {})() === (function () {})()
4 //=> true
5 (function () {})() === undefined
6 //=> true

No matter how you evaluate undefined, you get an identical value back. undefined is a value that
means “I don’t have a value.” But it’s still a value :-)

You might think that undefined in JavaScript is equivalent to NULL in SQL. No. In SQL, two things
that are NULL are not equal to nor share the same identity, because two unknowns can’t be equal.
In JavaScript, every undefined is identical to every other undefined.
.

void
We’ve seen that JavaScript represents an undefined value by typing undefined, and we’ve generated
undefined values in two ways:

1. By evaluating a function that doesn’t return a value (function () {})(), and;

2. By writing undefined ourselves.

There’s a third way, with JavaScript’s void operator. Behold:

 The first sip: Basic Functions 6

1 void 0
2 //=> undefined
3 void 1
4 //=> undefined
5 void (2 + 2)
6 //=> undefined

void is an operator that takes any value and evaluates to undefined, always. So, when we
deliberately want an undefined value, should we use the first, second, or third form?² The answer
is, use void. By convention, use void 0.
The first form works but it’s cumbersome. The second form works most of the time, but it is possible
to break it by reassigning undefined to a different value, something we’ll discuss in Reassignment
and Mutation. The third form is guaranteed to always work, so that’s what we will use.³

functions with no arguments and their bodies

Back to our function. We evaluated this:

1 (function () {})()
2 //=> undefined

Let’s recall that we were applying the function function () {} to no arguments (because there was
nothing inside of ()). So how do we know to expect undefined? That’s easy:
When we define a function⁴, we write the word function. We then put a (possibly empty) list of
arguments, then we give the function a body that is enclosed in braces {...}. Function bodies are
(possibly empty) lists of JavaScript statements separated by semicolons.
Something like: { statement1 ; statement2 ; statement3 ; … ; statementn }
We haven’t discussed these statements. What’s a statement?
There are many kinds of JavaScript statements, but the first kind is one we’ve already met. An
expression is a JavaScript statement. Although they aren’t very practical, the following are all valid
JavaScript functions, and they all evaluate to undefined when applied:

²Experienced JavaScript programmers are aware that there’s a fourth way, using a function argument. This was actually the preferred mechanism
until void became commonplace.
³As an exercise for the reader, we suggest you ask your friendly neighbourhood programming language designer or human factors subject-matter
expert to explain why a keyword called void is used to generate an undefined value, instead of calling them both void or both undefined. We have
no idea.
⁴TODO: Named functions, probably discussed in a whole new section when we discuss var hoisting.
 The first sip: Basic Functions 7

1 (function () { 2 + 2 })
2
3 (function () { 1 + 1; 2 + 2 })

You can also separate statements with line breaks.⁵ The convention is to use some form of consistent
indenting:

1 (function () {
2 1 + 1;
3 2 + 2
4 })
5
6 (function () {
7 (function () {
8 (function () {
9 (function () {
10 })
11 })
12 });
13 (function () {
14 })
15 })

That last one’s a doozy, but since a function body can contain a statement, and a statement can be
an expression, and a function is an expression…. You get the idea.
So how do we get a function to return a value when applied? With the return keyword and any
expression:

1 (function () { return 0 })()

2 //=> 0
3
4 (function () { return 1 })()
5 //=> 1
6
7 (function () { return 'Hello ' + 'World' })()
8 // 'Hello World'

The return keyword creates a return statement that immediately terminates the function application
and returns the result of evaluating its expression.
⁵Readers who follow internet flame-fests may be aware of something called automatic semi-colon insertion. Basically, there’s a step where
JavaScript looks at your code and follows some rules to guess where you meant to put semicolons in should you leave them out. This feature was
originally created as a kind of helpful error-correction. Some programmers argue that since it’s part of the language’s definition, it’s fair game to write
code that exploits it, so they deliberately omit any semicolon that JavaScript will insert for them.
 The first sip: Basic Functions 8

functions that evaluate to functions

If an expression that evaluates to a function is, well, an expression, and if a return statement can
have any expression on its right side… Can we put an expression that evaluates to a function on the
right side of a function expression?
Yes:

1 function () {
2 return (function () {})
3 }

That’s a function! It’s a function that when applied, evaluates to a function that when applied,
evaluates to undefined.⁶ Let’s use a simpler terminology. Instead of saying “that when applied,
evaluates to _____,” we will say “gives _____.” And instead of saying “gives undefined,” we’ll say
“doesn’t give anything.”
So we have a function, that gives a function, that doesn’t give anything. Likewise:

1 function () {
2 return (function () {
3 return true
4 })
5 }

That’s a function, that gives a function, that gives true:

1 (function () {
2 return (function () {
3 return true
4 })
5 })()()
6 //=> true

Well. We’ve been very clever, but so far this all seems very abstract. Diffraction of a crystal is
beautiful and interesting in its own right, but you can’t blame us for wanting to be shown a practical
use for it, like being able to determine the composition of a star millions of light years away. So… In
the next chapter, “I’d Like to Have an Argument, Please,” we’ll see how to make functions practical.
⁶What a mouthful! This is why other languages with a strong emphasis on functions come up with syntaxes like ‘ -> -> undefined‘
 The first sip: Basic Functions 9

Ah. I’d Like to Have an Argument, Please.⁷

Up to now, we’ve looked at functions without arguments. We haven’t even said what an argument
is, only that our functions don’t have any.

Most programmers are perfectly familiar with arguments (often called “parameters”). Secondary
school mathematics discusses this. So you know what they are, and I know that you know what
they are, but please be patient with the explanation!
.

Let’s make a function with an argument:

1 function (room) {}

This function has one argument, room, and no body. Here’s a function with two arguments and no
body:

1 function (room, board) {}

I’m sure you are perfectly comfortable with the idea that this function has two arguments, room,
and board. What does one do with the arguments? Use them in the body, of course. What do you
think this is?

1 function (diameter) { return diameter * 3.14159265 }

It’s a function for calculating the circumference of a circle given the diameter. I read that aloud
as “When applied to a value representing the diameter, this function returns the diameter times
3.14159265.”
Remember that to apply a function with no arguments, we wrote (function () {})(). To apply
a function with an argument (or arguments), we put the argument (or arguments) within the
parentheses, like this:

1 (function (diameter) { return diameter * 3.14159265 })(2)

2 //=> 6.2831853

You won’t be surprised to see how to write and apply a function to two arguments:

⁷The Argument Sketch from “Monty Python’s Previous Record” and “Monty Python’s Instant Record Collection”
 The first sip: Basic Functions 10

1 (function (room, board) { return room + board })(800, 150)

2 //=> 950

a quick summary of functions and bodies

How arguments are used in a body’s expression is probably perfectly obvious to you from
the examples, especially if you’ve used any programming language (except for the dialect
of BASIC–which I recall from my secondary school–that didn’t allow parameters when
you called a procedure).
Expressions consist either of representations of values (like 3.14159265, true, and
undefined), operators that combine expressions (like 3 + 2), some special forms like [1,
2, 3] for creating arrays out of expressions, or function (arguments) {body-statements}
for creating functions.
One of the important possible statements is a return statement. A return statement accepts
any valid JavaScript expression.
This loose definition is recursive, so we can intuit (or use our experience with other
languages) that since a function can contain a return statement with an expression, we can
write a function that returns a function, or an array that contains another array expression.
Or a function that returns an array, an array of functions, a function that returns an array
of functions, and so forth:

1 function () {
2 return function () {}
3 }
4
5 function () {
6 return [ 1, 2, 3]
7 }
8
9 [1, [2, 3], 4]
10
11 function () {
12 return [
13 (function () { return 1}),
14 (function () { return 2}),
15 (function () { return 3})
16 ]
17 }
 The first sip: Basic Functions 11

call by value
Like most contemporary programming languages, JavaScript uses the “call by value” evaluation
strategy⁸. That means that when you write some code that appears to apply a function to an
expression or expressions, JavaScript evaluates all of those expressions and applies the functions
to the resulting value(s).
So when you write:

1 (function (diameter) { return diameter * 3.14159265 })(1 + 1)

2 //=> 6.2831853

What happened internally is that the expression 1 + 1 was evaluated first, resulting in 2. Then our
circumference function was applied to 2.⁹

variables and bindings

Right now everything looks simple and straightforward, and we can move on to talk about
arguments in more detail. And we’re going to work our way up from function (diameter) {
return diameter * 3.14159265 } to functions like:

1 function (x) { return (function (y) { return x }) }

function (x) { return (function (y) { return x }) } just looks crazy, as if we are learning
English as a second language and the teacher promises us that soon we will be using words like
antidisestablishmentarianism. Besides a desire to use long words to sound impressive, this is not
going to seem attractive until we find ourselves wanting to discuss the role of the Church of England
in 19th century British politics.
But there’s another reason for learning the word antidisestablishmentarianism: We might learn
how prefixes and postfixes work in English grammar. It’s the same thing with function (x) {
return (function (y) { return x }) }. It has a certain important meaning in its own right, and
it’s also an excellent excuse to learn about functions that make functions, environments, variables,
and more.
.

In order to talk about how this works, we should agree on a few terms (you may already know them,
but let’s check-in together and “synchronize our dictionaries”). The first x, the one in function (x)
..., is an argument. The y in function (y) ... is another argument. The second x, the one in {

⁸http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaluation_strategy
⁹We said that you can’t apply a function to an expression. You can apply a function to one or more functions. Functions are values! This has
interesting applications, and they will be explored much more thoroughly in Functions That Are Applied to Functions.
 The first sip: Basic Functions 12

return x }, is not an argument, it’s an expression referring to a variable. Arguments and variables
work the same way whether we’re talking about function (x) { return (function (y) { return
x }) } or just plain function (x) { return x }.

Every time a function is invoked (“invoked” means “applied to zero or more arguments”), a new
environment is created. An environment is a (possibly empty) dictionary that maps variables to
values by name. The x in the expression that we call a “variable” is itself an expression that is
evaluated by looking up the value in the environment.
How does the value get put in the environment? Well for arguments, that is very simple. When you
apply the function to the arguments, an entry is placed in the dictionary for each argument. So when
we write:

1 (function (x) { return x })(2)

2 //=> 2

What happens is this:

1. JavaScript parses this whole thing as an expression made up of several sub-expressions.

2. It then starts evaluating the expression, including evaluating sub-expressions
3. One sub-expression, function (x) { return x } evaluates to a function.
4. Another, 2, evaluates to the number 2.
5. JavaScript now evaluates applying the function to the argument 2. Here’s where it gets
interesting…
6. An environment is created.
7. The value ‘2’ is bound to the name ‘x’ in the environment.
8. The expression ‘x’ (the right side of the function) is evaluated within the environment we just
created.
9. The value of a variable when evaluated in an environment is the value bound to the variable’s
name in that environment, which is ‘2’
10. And that’s our result.

When we talk about environments, we’ll use an unsurprising syntax¹⁰ for showing their bindings:
{x: 2, ...}. meaning, that the environment is a dictionary, and that the value 2 is bound to the
name x, and that there might be other stuff in that dictionary we aren’t discussing right now.
¹⁰http://json.org/
 The first sip: Basic Functions 13

call by sharing
Earlier, we distinguished JavaScript’s value types from its reference types. At that time, we looked
at how JavaScript distinguishes objects that are identical from objects that are not. Now it is time to
take another look at the distinction between value and reference types.
There is a property that JavaScript strictly maintains: When a value–any value–is passed as an
argument to a function, the value bound in the function’s environment must be identical to the
original.
We said that JavaScript binds names to values, but we didn’t say what it means to bind a name to a
value. Now we can elaborate: When JavaScript binds a value-type to a name, it makes a copy of the
value and places the copy in the environment. As you recall, value types like strings and numbers
are identical to each other if they have the same content. So JavaScript can make as many copies of
strings, numbers, or booleans as it wishes.
What about reference types? JavaScript does not place copies of reference values in any environment.
JavaScript places references to reference types in environments, and when the value needs to be used,
JavaScript uses the reference to obtain the original.
Because many references can share the same value, and because JavaScript passes references as
arguments, JavaScript can be said to implement “call by sharing” semantics. Call by sharing is
generally understood to be a specialization of call by value, and it explains why some values are
known as value types and other values are known as reference types.
And with that, we’re ready to look at closures. When we combine our knowledge of value types,
reference types, arguments, and closures, we’ll understand why this function always evaluates to
true no matter what argument you apply it to:

1 function (value) {
2 return (function (copy) {
3 return copy === value
4 })(value)
5 }

Closures and Scope

It’s time to see how a function within a function works:
 The first sip: Basic Functions 14

1 (function (x) {
2 return function (y) {
3 return x
4 }
5 })(1)(2)
6 //=> 1

First off, let’s use what we learned above. Given (some function)(some argument ), we know that
we apply the function to the argument, create an environment, bind the value of the argument to
the name, and evaluate the function’s expression. So we do that first with this code:

1 (function (x) {
2 return function (y) {
3 return x
4 }
5 })(1)
6 //=> [Function]

The environment belonging to the function with signature function (x) ... becomes {x: 1, ...},
and the result of applying the function is another function value. It makes sense that the result value
is a function, because the expression for function (x) ...’s body is:

1 function (y) {
2 return x
3 }

So now we have a value representing that function. Then we’re going to take the value of that
function and apply it to the argument 2, something like this:

1 (function (y) {
2 return x
3 })(2)

So we seem to get a new environment {y: 2, ...}. How is the expression x going to be evaluated in
that function’s environment? There is no x in its environment, it must come from somewhere else.

This, by the way, is one of the great defining characteristics of JavaScript and languages in the
same family: Whether they allow things like functions to nest inside each other, and if so, how they
handle variables from “outside” of a function that are referenced inside a function. For example,
here’s the equivalent code in Ruby:
.
 The first sip: Basic Functions 15

1 lambda { |x|
2 lambda { |y| x }
3 }[1][2]
4 #=> 1

Now let’s enjoy a relaxed Allongé before we continue!

.

If functions without free variables are pure, are closures impure?

The function function (y) { return x } is interesting. It contains a free variable, x.¹¹ A free
variable is one that is not bound within the function. Up to now, we’ve only seen one way to “bind”
a variable, namely by passing in an argument with the same name. Since the function function (y)
{ return x } doesn’t have an argument named x, the variable x isn’t bound in this function, which
makes it “free.”
Now that we know that variables used in a function are either bound or free, we can bifurcate
functions into those with free variables and those without:

• Functions containing no free variables are called pure functions.

• Functions containing one or more free variables are called closures.

Pure functions are easiest to understand. They always mean the same thing wherever you use them.
Here are some pure functions we’ve already seen:

1 function () {}
2
3 function (x) {
4 return x
5 }
6
7 function (x) {
8 return function (y) {
9 return x
10 }
11 }

The first function doesn’t have any variables, therefore doesn’t have any free variables. The second
doesn’t have any free variables, because its only variable is bound. The third one is actually two
¹¹You may also hear the term “non-local variable.” Both are correct.
The first sip: Basic Functions 16

functions, one in side the other. function (y) ... has a free variable, but the entire expression
refers to function (x) ..., and it doesn’t have a free variable: The only variable anywhere in its
body is x, which is certainly bound within function (x) ....
From this, we learn something: A pure function can contain a closure.

If pure functions can contain closures, can a closure contain a pure function? Using only
what we’ve learned so far, attempt to compose a closure that contains a pure function. If
you can’t, give your reasoning for why it’s impossible.

Pure functions always mean the same thing because all of their “inputs” are fully defined by their
arguments. Not so with a closure. If I present to you this pure function function (x, y) { return
x + y }, we know exactly what it does with (2, 2). But what about this closure: function (y) {
return x + y }? We can’t say what it will do with argument (2) without understanding the magic
for evaluating the free variable x.

it’s always the environment

To understand how closures are evaluated, we need to revisit environments. As we’ve said before,
all functions are associated with an environment. We also hand-waved something when describing
our environment. Remember that we said the environment for (function (x) { return (function
(y) { return x }) })(1) is {x: 1, ...} and that the environment for (function (y) { return
x })(2) is {y: 2, ...}? Let’s fill in the blanks!

The environment for (function (y) { return x })(2) is actually {y: 2, '..': {x: 1, ...}}.
'..' means something like “parent” or “enclosure” or “super-environment.” It’s function (x) ...’s
environment, because the function function (y) { return x } is within function (x) ...’s
body. So whenever a function is applied to arguments, its environment always has a reference to its
parent environment.
And now you can guess how we evaluate (function (y) { return x })(2) in the environment
{y: 2, '..': {x: 1, ...}}. The variable x isn’t in function (y) ...’s immediate environment,
but it is in its parent’s environment, so it evaluates to 1 and that’s what (function (y) { return
x })(2) returns even though it ended up ignoring its own argument.

function (x) { return x } is called the I Combinator or Identity Function. function (x) {
return (function (y) { return x }) } is called the K Combinator or Kestrel. Some people get
so excited by this that they write entire books about them, some are great, some–how shall I put
this–are interesting if you use Ruby.
http://www.amzn.com/0192801422?tag=raganwald001-20
https://leanpub.com/combinators

.
 The first sip: Basic Functions 17

Functions can have grandparents too:

1 function (x) {
2 return function (y) {
3 return function (z) {
4 return x + y + z
5 }
6 }
7 }

This function does much the same thing as:

1 function (x, y, z) {
2 return x + y + z
3 }

Only you call it with (1)(2)(3) instead of (1, 2, 3). The other big difference is that you can call
it with (1) and get a function back that you can later call with (2)(3).
 The first sip: Basic Functions 18

The first function is the result of currying the second function. Calling a curried function with
only some of its arguments is sometimes called partial application. Some programming languages
automatically curry and partially evaluate functions without the need to manually nest them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currying
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_application

shadowy variables from a shadowy planet

An interesting thing happens when a variable has the same name as an ancestor environment’s
variable. Consider:

1 function (x) {
2 return function (x, y) {
3 return x + y
4 }
5 }

The function function (x, y) { return x + y } is a pure function, because its x is defined
within its own environment. Although its parent also defines an x, it is ignored when evaluating x
+ y. JavaScript always searches for a binding starting with the functions own environment and then
each parent in turn until it finds one. The same is true of:

1 function (x) {
2 return function (x, y) {
3 return function (w, z) {
4 return function (w) {
5 return x + y + z
6 }
7 }
8 }
9 }

When evaluating x + y + z, JavaScript will find x and y in the great-grandparent scope and z in the
parent scope. The x in the great-great-grandparent scope is ignored, as are both ws. When a variable
has the same name as an ancestor environment’s binding, it is said to shadow the ancestor.
This is often a good thing.
 The first sip: Basic Functions 19

which came first, the chicken or the egg?

This behaviour of pure functions and closures has many, many consequences that can be exploited
to write software. We are going to explore them in some detail as well as look at some of the other
mechanisms JavaScript provides for working with variables and mutable state.
But before we do so, there’s one final question: Where does the ancestry start? If there’s no other
code in a file, what is function (x) { return x }’s parent environment?
JavaScript always has the notion of at least one environment we do not control: A global
environment in which many useful things are bound such as libraries full of standard functions.
So when you invoke (function (x) { return x })(1) in the REPL, its full environment is going
to look like this: {x: 1, '..': global environment }.
Sometimes, programmers wish to avoid this. If you don’t want your code to operate directly within
the global environment, what can you do? Create an environment for them, of course. Many
programmers choose to write every JavaScript file like this:

1 // top of the file

2 (function () {
3
4 // ... lots of JavaScript ...
5
6 })();
7 // bottom of the file

The effect is to insert a new, empty environment in between the global environment and your own
functions: {x: 1, '..': {'..': global environment }}. As we’ll see when we discuss mutable state,
this helps to prevent programmers from accidentally changing the global state that is shared by code
in every file when they use the var keyword properly.

Let’s Talk Var

Up to now, all we’ve really seen are anonymous functions, functions that don’t have a name. This
feels very different from programming in most other languages, where the focus is on naming
functions, methods, and procedures. Naming things is a critical part of programming, but all we’ve
seen so far is how to name arguments.
There are other ways to name things in JavaScript, but before we learn some of those, let’s see how
to use what we already have to name things. Let’s revisit a very simple example:
 The first sip: Basic Functions 20

1 function (diameter) {
2 return diameter * 3.14159265
3 }

What is this “3.14159265” number? Pi¹², obviously. We’d like to name it so that we can write
something like:

1 function (diameter) {
2 return diameter * Pi
3 }

In order to bind 3.14159265 to the name Pi, we’ll need a function with a parameter of Pi applied
to an argument of 3.14159265. If we put our function expression in parentheses, we can apply it to
the argument of 3.14159265:

1 (function (Pi) {
2 return ????
3 })(3.14159265)

What do we put inside our new function that binds 3.14159265 to the name Pi when evaluated?
Our circumference function, of course:

1 (function (Pi) {
2 return function (diameter) {
3 return diameter * Pi
4 }
5 })(3.14159265)

This expression, when evaluated, returns a function that calculates circumferences. It differs from
our original in that it names the constant Pi. Let’s test it:

1 (function (Pi) {
2 return function (diameter) {
3 return diameter * Pi
4 }
5 })(3.14159265)(2)
6 //=> 6.2831853

That works! We can bind anything we want in an expression by wrapping it in a function that is
immediately invoked with the value we want to bind.
¹²https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi
 The first sip: Basic Functions 21

immediately invoked function expressions

JavaScript programmers regularly use the idea of writing an expression that denotes a function
and then immediately applying it to arguments. Explaining the pattern, Ben Alman coined the term
Immediately Invoked Function Expression¹³ for it, often abbreviated “IIFE.” As we’ll see in a moment,
an IIFE need not have parameters:

1 (function () {
2 // ... do something here...
3 })();

When an IIFE binds values to names (as we did above with Pi), retro-grouch programmers often call
it “let.”¹⁴ And confusing the issue, upcoming versions of JavaScript have support for a let keyword
that has a similar binding behaviour.

var
Using an IIFE to bind names works very well, but only a masochist would write programs this way
in JavaScript. Besides all the extra characters, it suffers from a fundamental semantic problem: there
is a big visual distance between the name Pi and the value 3.14159265 we bind to it. They should
be closer. Is there another way?
Yes.
Another way to write our “circumference” function would be to pass Pi along with the diameter
argument, something like this:

1 function (diameter, Pi) {

2 return diameter * Pi
3 }

And you could use it like this:

1 (function (diameter, Pi) {

2 return diameter * Pi
3 })(2, 3.14159265)
4 //=> 6.2831853
¹³http://www.benalman.com/news/2010/11/immediately-invoked-function-expression/
¹⁴To be pedantic, both main branches of Lisp today define a special construct called “let.” One, Scheme, uses define-syntax to rewrite let into an
immediately invoked function expression that binds arguments to values as shown above. The other, Common Lisp, leaves it up to implementations
to decide how to implement let.
 The first sip: Basic Functions 22

This differs from our example above in that there is only one environment, rather than two. We have
one binding in the environment representing our regular argument, and another our “constant.”
That’s more efficient, and it’s almost what we wanted all along: A way to bind 3.14159265 to a
readable name.
JavaScript gives us a way to do that, the var keyword. We’ll learn a lot more about var in future
chapters, but here’s the most important thing you can do with var:

1 function (diameter) {
2 var Pi = 3.14159265;
3
4 return diameter * Pi
5 }

The var keyword introduces one or more bindings in the current function’s environment. It works
just as we want:

1 (function (diameter) {
2 var Pi = 3.14159265;
3
4 return diameter * Pi
5 })(2)
6 //=> 6.2831853

You can bind any expression. Functions are expressions, so you can bind helper functions:

1 function (d) {
2 var calc = function (diameter) {
3 var Pi = 3.14159265;
4
5 return diameter * Pi
6 };
7
8 return "The circumference is " + calc(d)
9 }

Notice calc(d)? This underscores what we’ve said: if you have an expression that evaluates to a
function, you apply it with (). A name that’s bound to a function is a valid expression evaluating
to a function.¹⁵

¹⁵We’re into the second chapter and we’ve finally named a function. Sheesh.
 The first sip: Basic Functions 23

Amazing how such an important idea–naming functions–can be explained en passant in just a

few words. That emphasizes one of the things JavaScript gets really, really right: Functions as “first
class entities.” Functions are values that can be bound to names like any other value, passed as
arguments, returned from other functions, and so forth.
.

You can bind more than one name-value pair by separating them with commas. For readability,
most people put one binding per line:

1 function (d) {
2 var Pi = 3.14159265,
3 calc = function (diameter) {
4 return diameter * Pi
5 };
6
7 return "The circumference is " + calc(d)
8 }

These examples use the var keyword to bind names in the same environment as our function. We
can also create a new scope using an IIFE if we wish to bind some names in part of a function:

1 function foobar () {
2
3 // do something without foo or bar
4
5 (function () {
6 var foo = 'foo',
7 bar = 'bar';
8
9 // ... do something with foo and bar ...
10
11 })();
12
13 // do something else without foo or bar
14
15 }

Naming Functions
Let’s get right to it. This code does not name a function:
 The first sip: Basic Functions 24

1 var repeat = function (str) {

2 return str + str
3 };

It doesn’t name the function “repeat” for the same reason that var answer = 42 doesn’t name the
number 42. That snippet of code binds an anonymous function to a name in an environment, but
the function itself remains anonymous.
JavaScript does have a syntax for naming a function, it looks like this:

1 var bindingName = function actualName () {

2 //...
3 };

In this expression, bindingName is the name in the environment, but actualName is the function’s
actual name. This is a named function expression. That may seem confusing, but think of the binding
names as properties of the environment, not the function itself. And indeed the name is a property:

1 bindingName.name
2 //=> 'actualName'

In this book we are not examining JavaScript’s tooling such as debuggers baked into browsers, but
we will note that when you are navigating call stacks in all modern tools, the function’s binding
name is ignored but its actual name is displayed, so naming functions is very useful even if they
don’t get a formal binding, e.g.

1 someBackboneView.on('click', function clickHandler () {

2 //...
3 });

Now, the function’s actual name has no effect on the environment in which it is used. To whit:

1 var bindingName = function actualName () {

2 //...
3 };
4
5 bindingName
6 //=> [Function: actualName]
7
8 actualName
9 //=> ReferenceError: actualName is not defined

So “actualName” isn’t bound in the environment where we use the named function expression. Is it
bound anywhere else? Yes it is:
 The first sip: Basic Functions 25

1 var fn = function even (n) {

2 if (n === 0) {
3 return true
4 }
5 else return !even(n - 1)
6 }
7
8 fn(5)
9 //=> false
10
11 fn(2)
12 //=> true

even is bound within the function itself, but not outside it. This is useful for making recursive
functions.

function declarations
We’ve actually buried the lede.¹⁶ Naming functions for the purpose of debugging is not as important
as what we’re about to discuss. There is another syntax for naming and/or defining a function. It’s
called a function declaration, and it looks like this:

1 function someName () {
2 // ...
3 }

This behaves a little like:

1 var someName = function someName () {

2 // ...
3 }

In that it binds a name in the environment to a named function. However, consider this piece of
code:

¹⁶A lead (or lede) paragraph in literature refers to the opening paragraph of an article, essay, news story or book chapter. In journalism, the failure
to mention the most important, interesting or attention-grabbing elements of a story in the first paragraph is sometimes called “burying the lede.”
 The first sip: Basic Functions 26

1 (function () {
2 return someName;
3
4 var someName = function someName () {
5 // ...
6 }
7 })()
8 //=> undefined

This is what we expect given what we learned about var: Although someName is declared later in the
function, JavaScript behaves as if you’d written:

1 (function () {
2 var someName;
3
4 return someName;
5
6 someName = function someName () {
7 // ...
8 }
9 })()

What about a function declaration without var?

1 (function () {
2 return someName;
3
4 function someName () {
5 // ...
6 }
7 })()
8 //=> [Function: someName]

Aha! It works differently, as if you’d written:

 The first sip: Basic Functions 27

1 (function () {
2 var someName = function someName () {
3 // ...
4 }
5 return someName;
6 })()

That difference is intentional on the part of JavaScript’s design to facilitate a certain style of
programming where you put the main logic up front, and the “helper functions” at the bottom.
It is not necessary to declare functions in this way in JavaScript, but understanding the syntax and
its behaviour (especially the way it differs from var) is essential for working with production code.

function declaration caveats¹⁷

Function declarations are formally only supposed to be made at what we might call the “top level”
of a function. Although some JavaScript environments may permit it, this example is technically
illegal and definitely a bad idea:

1 // function declarations should not happen inside of

2 // a block and/or be conditionally executed
3 if (frobbishes.arePizzled()) {
4 function complainToFactory () {
5 // ...
6 }
7 }

The big trouble with expressions like this is that they may work just fine in your test environment
but work a different way in production. Or it may work one way today and a different way when
the JavaScript engine is updated, say with a new optimization.
Another caveat is that a function declaration cannot exist inside of any expression, otherwise it’s a
function expression. So this is a function declaration:

1 function trueDat () { return true }

But this is not:

1 (function trueDat () { return true })

The parentheses make this an expression.

¹⁷A number of the caveats discussed here were described in Jyrly Zaytsev’s excellent article Named function expressions demystified.
 The first sip: Basic Functions 28

Combinators and Function Decorators

higher-order functions
As we’ve seen, JavaScript functions take values as arguments and return values. JavaScript functions
are values, so JavaScript functions can take functions as arguments, return functions, or both.
Generally speaking, a function that either takes functions as arguments or returns a function (or
both) is referred to as a “higher-order” function.
Here’s very simple higher-order function that takes a function as an argument:

1 function repeat (num, fn) {

2 var i, value;
3
4 for (i = 1; i <= num; ++i)
5 value = fn(i);
6
7 return value;
8 }
9
10 repeat(3, function () {
11 console.log('Hello')
12 })
13 //=>
14 'Hello'
15 'Hello'
16 'Hello'
17 undefined

Higher-order functions dominate JavaScript Allongé. But before we go on, we’ll talk about some
specific types of higher-order functions.

combinators
The word “combinator” has a precise technical meaning in mathematics:

“A combinator is a higher-order function that uses only function application and earlier
defined combinators to define a result from its arguments.”–Wikipedia¹⁸
¹⁸https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinatory_logic
 The first sip: Basic Functions 29

If we were learning Combinatorial Logic, we’d start with the most basic combinators like S, K, and
I, and work up from there to practical combinators. We’d learn that the fundamental combinators
are named after birds following the example of Raymond Smullyan’s famous book To Mock a
Mockingbird¹⁹.
In this book, we will be using a looser definition of “combinator:” Higher-order pure functions
that take only functions as arguments and return a function. We won’t be strict about using only
previously defined combinators in their construction.
Let’s start with a useful combinator: Most programmers call it Compose, although the logicians call
it the B combinator or “Bluebird.” Here is the typical²⁰ programming implementation:

1 function compose (a, b) {

2 return function (c) {
3 return a(b(c))
4 }
5 }

Let’s say we have:

1 function addOne (number) {

2 return number + 1
3 }
4
5 function doubleOf (number) {
6 return number * 2
7 }

With compose, anywhere you would write

1 function doubleOfAddOne (number) {

2 return doubleOf(addOne(number))
3 }

You could also write:

1 var doubleOfAddOne = compose(doubleOf, addOne);

This is, of course, just one example of many. You’ll find lots more perusing the recipes in this book.
While some programmers believe “There Should Only Be One Way To Do It,” having combinators
available as well as explicitly writing things out with lots of symbols and keywords has some
advantages when used judiciously.
¹⁹http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A1P096Y/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=
B00A1P096Y&linkCode=as2&tag=raganwald001-20
²⁰As we’ll discuss later, this implementation of the B Combinator is correct in languages like Scheme, but for truly general-purpose use in JavaScript
it needs to correctly manage the function context.
 The first sip: Basic Functions 30

a balanced statement about combinators

Code that uses a lot of combinators tends to name the verbs and adverbs (like doubleOf, addOne,
and compose) while avoiding language keywords and the names of nouns (like number). So one
perspective is that combinators are useful when you want to emphasize what you’re doing and how
it fits together, and more explicit code is useful when you want to emphasize what you’re working
with.

function decorators
A function decorator is a higher-order function that takes one function as an argument, returns
another function, and the returned function is a variation of the argument function. Here’s a
ridiculous example of a decorator:

1 function not (fn) {

2 return function (argument) {
3 return !fn(argument)
4 }
5 }

So instead of writing !someFunction(42), you can write not(someFunction)(42). Hardly progress.

But like compose, you could write either

1 function something (x) {

2 return x != null
3 }

And elsewhere, he writes:

1 function nothing (x) {

2 return !something(x)
3 }

Or:

1 var nothing = not(something);

not is a function decorator because it modifies a function while remaining strongly related to the
original function’s semantics. You’ll see other function decorators in the recipes, like once, mapWith,
and maybe. Function decorators aren’t strict about being pure functions, so there’s more latitude for
making decorators than combinators.
 The first sip: Basic Functions 31

Building Blocks
When you look at functions within functions in JavaScript, there’s a bit of a “spaghetti code” look
to it. The strength of JavaScript is that you can do anything. The weakness is that you will. There
are ifs, fors, returns, everything thrown higgledy piggledy together. Although you needn’t restrict
yourself to a small number of simple patterns, it can be helpful to understand the patterns so that
you can structure your code around some basic building blocks.

composition
One of the most basic of these building blocks is composition:

1 function cookAndEat (food) {

2 return eat(cook(food))
3 }

It’s really that simple: Whenever you are chaining two or more functions together, you’re composing
them. You can compose them with explicit JavaScript code as we’ve just done. You can also generalize
composition with the B Combinator or “compose” that we saw in Combinators and Decorators:

1 function compose (a, b) {

2 return function (c) {
3 return a(b(c))
4 }
5 }
6
7 var cookAndEat = compose(eat, cook);

If that was all there was to it, composition wouldn’t matter much. But like many patterns, using it
when it applies is only 20% of the benefit. The other 80% comes from organizing your code such that
you can use it: Writing functions that can be composed in various ways.
In the recipes, we’ll look at a decorator called once: It ensures that a function can only be executed
once. Thereafter, it does nothing. Once is useful for ensuring that certain side effects are not repeated.
We’ll also look at maybe: It ensures that a function does nothing if it is given nothing (like null or
undefined) as an argument.

Of course, you needn’t use combinators to implement either of these ideas, you can use if statements.
But once and maybe compose, so you can chain them together as you see fit:
 The first sip: Basic Functions 32

1 function actuallyTransfer(from, to, amount) {

2 // do something
3 }
4
5 var invokeTransfer = once(maybe(actuallyTransfer(...)));

partial application
Another basic building block is partial application. When a function takes multiple arguments, we
“apply” the function to the arguments by evaluating it with all of the arguments, producing a value.
But what if we only supply some of the arguments? In that case, we can’t get the final value, but we
can get a function that represents part of our application.
Code is easier than words for this. The Underscore²¹ library provides a higher-order function called
map.²² It applies another function to each element of an array, like this:

1 _.map([1, 2, 3], function (n) { return n * n })

2 //=> [1, 4, 9]

This code implements a partial application of the map function by applying the function function
(n) { return n * n } as its second argument:

1 function squareAll (array) {

2 return _.map(array, function (n) { return n * n })
3 }

The resulting function–squareAll–is still the map function, it’s just that we’ve applied one of its two
arguments already. squareAll is nice, but why write one function every time we want to partially
apply a function to a map? We can abstract this one level higher. mapWith takes any function as an
argument and returns a partially applied map function.

²¹http://underscorejs.org
²²Modern JavaScript implementations provide a map method for arrays, but Underscore’s implementation also works with older browsers if you
are working with that headache.
 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
drunk noo—sin' he couldna keep his ain saydel the last time I saw him on
horseback, it's but richt he should pay for the lost ane—Keck, keck, keck.
Noo, Saunders, ye're a decent lad, sae satisfy yere conscience, and mind ye
gie up, in shape o' discoont, at the settlement, the amount o' aw the fictitious
items, barring the saydels and the grunstanes, though—mind that—barring
the saydels and the grunstanes. Noo, soom up and close, ye deevil—soom
up and close."

"Ah, custos," said Mr Turner, as the gentleman we were waiting for

entered, "glad to see you, glad to see you." Here, having explained how
matters stood, his honour retired with us into Jacob Munroe's back store.

"Well, namesake, how are you?" said Twig to the old man who owned
the small voice, and who now emerged and became visible, as he crept
before us and opened the door.

"Oo, fine, Maister Twig, fine—did ye fin' the accoonts against Roaring
River and Hector's Folly estates aw correct, Mr Twig?"

"Yes, all correct, all correct; only you have charged me a saddle too
many."

The old withered anatomy looked with a quizzical leer of his eye at him,
as much as to say, "have you overheard me, master Twig?—but I am rich
and don't care."

"Saunders," cried the old man, "I say, Saunders, bring the ink and ae
chair for the custos and the gentlemen," as if we all could have sat upon
one; "and, Abrahaam," to one of the store negroes, "shool away that shell
into a corner, and gie them room."

"Shell," said I, in some surprise; "why, is that great mass all tortoise-
shell?"

"Atweel is it, young gentleman; at least it is the shell of the hawk's-bill

turtle, which is the same thing. That's the last cargo of the Jenny Nettles,
frae the Indian coast—she sould be up again aboot this time, if she be na
cacht by they incarnate deevils o' peerates—but she's weel assured, she's
weel assured. Why, Saunders!—whar the deevil are ye, Saunders?"

"Here, sir," said the young man whom I had seen at the desk, as he
entered with writing materials in one hand, a chair for his Honour in the
other, and a Bible (as he naturally concluded that some depositions on oath
were to be taken) in his teeth. I paid no particular attention to him until he
startled me by suddenly dropping the chair on Twig's toes, exclaiming, as he
caught the Bible in his hand, "Gude hae a care o' us, Mr Brail, is this you
yeersell?"—And lo, who should stand before me, but our old friend
Lennox.

"Why, old shipmate, how are you?—I am glad to see you; but I thought
you had turned coffee-planter by this time?"

"And so I have, sir. My uncle there sends me up the end of every week to
superintend his plantation in the mountains; but I am here for the most part
of my time in the store, helping him. But where are you lodging, Mr Brail?
I hope you will permit me to call on you; for I see you are likely to be
engaged at present."

I told him where I staid, and in few words what the reader knows already
regarding my Jamaica expectations and the cause of my visit; farther, that I
was about leaving town, but that I would not fail having a chat with him
soon, as I should no doubt be often at the bay.

The custos, after taking our depositions, wrote to the admiral at Port-
Royal, and to correspondents of his at all the outports, with an outline of the
circumstances, in case any of His Majesty's ships should be there; and in the
mean time it was determined that poor Hause, after giving his underwriters
in Kingston notice of his calamity, should remain at Montego bay until it
was seen what should turn up. Here I must do old Jacob Munroe justice.
Before the meeting broke up, he in our presence invited him to stay in his
house as long as it suited him. Lennox, seeing I was surprised at this,
whispered in my ear, that, "Snell as his uncle was in business matters, the
auld-farrant body had a warm heart still to a fellow-creature in distress."
 "Come along, Mr Brail," said Flamingo—"as we cannot make a start of
it this evening now, let us adjourn to our friend Sally's, and see what
entertainment she can provide for us; and then hey for Ballywindle at
daybreak to-morrow."

However, our troubles were not over for that day; for we had not
proceeded fifty yards on our way to our lodgings, when an ugly bloated
drunken-looking white man, with great flabby yellow cheeks, that shook as
he walked like flannel-bags full of jelly, and in a most profuse perspiration,
driven forth, I make no doubt, by a glorious rummer of grog, came up to us,
and touched both of us on the shoulder—most people are rather sensitive
regarding a touch thereabouts, so we faced suddenly round.

"I warn you bote, gentlemen, to attend one coroner's inquest at Jacob
Munroe's wharf."

"The deuce you do?" said I. "Pray, what authority have you for this, my
fine fellow?"

"De coroner's warrant, sir," producing it.

"Oh, we are nailed, Mr Brail," quoth Don Felix. "Crowner's Quest law is
not to be disputed—no use in kicking. So pray, my good man, do you want
any more jurors?"

"Indeed I do, sare. You are de first I have warn as yet."

"Oh, then, do you see that red-faced gentleman coming round the corner
there?"

"Yesh, I do," said the man.

"Then bone him instanter, or he will bolt." This was no less a personage
than Jacob Twig again. The man on this made a detour, and took our friend
in flank, but the moment Jacob saw him he seemed to suspect his object,
and began to walk down the street very fast, followed by the constable.
There was a narrow turning to the right, near to where we stood, that led
amongst a nest of nanny houses, as they are called, inhabited by brown free
people, which was quite closed up by a party washing clothes and a girl
milking a cow beyond them. How Jacob was to escape, if his evil genius
should prompt him to try this channel, I could not conceive. As yet his
sense of propriety had only allowed him to get into a very fast walk.
Shamming deafness, however, all the while, to the reiterated shouts of the
constable, to "stand in de Kin's name;" but the moment he opened the lane,
off he started, with the long skirts of his frogged coat streaming in the wind,
and his little glazed hat blazing in the sun like a meteor, or the steel
headpiece of one of Bonaparte's cuirassiers.

There was an old woman stooping down over her tub, right fronting him,
that is, facing him in an Irish fashion, for she looked t'other way from him,
and two younger ones, similarly employed on each side of her. How he was
to clear them and their tubs, and the cow beyond, was the puzzle, as the
projecting eaves of the two lines of small houses, whose inmates were thus
employed, nearly met overhead. However, we were not left long in
suspense. Massa Twig now quickened his pace, and clapping his hands on
the old lady's shoulders, cleared her and her tub cleverly by a regular leap-
frog, tipping the heads of the two young women on each flank with his toes,
and alighted at the feet of the girl who was milking the cow, which had not
time to start before he followed up the fun by vaulting on her back; and then
charged down the lane through the tubs and over the prostrate constable,
passing us like a whirlwind, the quadruped funking up her heels, and
tossing the dry sand with her horns, as if startled by a myriad of gad-flies.
Both Flamingo and I strained our eyes to follow him, as he flew along like
smoke, careering down the lane that ended in the sea.

"Why don't he throw himself off?" said I; "the frantic brute is making
straight for the water—it will drown him if he don't."

"Jump off, man—jump off," roared Don Felix. But in vain; for the next
moment there was Jacob Twig of the Dream, in St Thomas in the East,
flashing and splashing in the sea, cow and all, an Irish illustration of the
fable of Europa. Presently both biped and quadruped were in deep water,
when they parted company, and all that we could see was a glazed hat and a
red face, and a redder face and a pair of horns, making for the shore again
as fast as they could.
 "Now, Twig is cheap of that," quoth Flamingo. "He is always aiming at
something out of the way, and certainly he has accomplished it this time;
but, see, there are people about him, so he is safe."

However, we were boned, and could not escape, so having lost sight of
him, we waited until the poor constable, a German, had gathered himself up
and joined us.—"And now, Master Constable, lead the way, if you please."

"Who is dat mans, as is mad?" quoth he, as soon as he could speak.

"Mr Purvis of Tantallon, near Lacovia," said Flamingo, as grave as a

judge.

"What a thumper," thought I Benjie.

We arrived at the wharf, when the coroner immediately impanelled the

jury, and we proceeded to view the body of the poor fellow who had been
murdered. It was lying on the wharf, covered with the sail as we had left it;
from under which, notwithstanding the short time it had been exposed, thick
fetid decomposed matter crept in several horrible streams, and dripped into
the clear green sea beneath, through the seams of the planking, where the
curdling blue drops were eagerly gobbled up by a shoal of small fish; while
a myriad of large blue-bottles rose with a loud hum from the cloth, as it was
removed on our approach, but only to settle down the next moment more
thickly than before, on the ghastly spectacle.—Bah.—Even in the short
period that the body had been in the water, the features were nearly
obliterated, and the hands much gnawed; three of the fingers were gone
entirely from the left. The windpipe and gullet were both severed with a
horrible gash, and there was a deep bruised indentation across the forehead,
as if from the heavy blow of a crowbar, or some other blunt weapon. There
was no doubt on earth but that the poor fellow had been surprised and met
his death by violence, and so suddenly that he could not give the alarm; so a
verdict was accordingly returned of "wilful murder, against a person or
persons unknown."

By the time we returned to our lodgings we found Massa Twig fresh

rigged after his exertions, and as full of frolic and oddity as ever.
 "Did you ever see a female bull so well actioned before, Felix?" said he.

"Never," replied his friend,—"took the water like a spaniel too—must be

accustomed to the sea—an Alderney cow, I suppose, Twig, eh?"

This evening passed on without any thing further occurring worth

recording.

Next morning, Lennox came to see me off, and gave me all his news. I
was exceedingly glad to learn that the poor fellow was so happily situated,
and promised to call on him the first time I came to the bay.

While lounging about the piazza before breakfast, I noticed our friend
Quacco busily employed cleaning a fowling-piece.

"Whose gun is that, Quacco?"

"Massa Flamingo's, sir."

"Let me see it—a nice handy affair—Purdy, I perceive—comes to my

shoulder very readily, beautifully."

"Wery clever leetle gone, for sartain, massa; but all de caps dem spoil,
sir. See de powder—percossion dem call—quite moist, and useless." By
this time he had fitted on one of the copper caps, and snapped the piece, but
it was dumb. "I am going to fill de caps wid fresh powder, massa; but really
dis percossion powder too lively, massa—only see"—and he gave a few
grains of it a small tip with the shank of the bullet mould, when it instantly
flashed up.

"Master Quacco," said I, "mind your hand; that is dangerous stuff. Tell
Mr Flamingo to be wary also, or he will be shooting people, for it is wrong
mixed, I am certain."

"Wery trang, wery trang for sartain, massa—but no fear in my hand—for

I is armourer, as well as waiting gentleman—oh, ebery ting is I Quacco."

"Confound your self-conceit."

 Here Flamingo and Twig came in.

"Good morning, Mr Brail."

"Good morning."

"All ready for the start, I see," said Twig. "Why, Felix, what is Mr Brail's
man doing with your gun?"

"Cleaning it, and filling these caps anew with fresh percussion powder:
the old has mildewed, or got damp, he tells me. Indeed, the last time I shot,
it was not one in three that exploded."

"Mind how you play with those caps," said I; but before I could proceed
——

"Sally, make haste and get breakfast," bawled Twig. "Do you hear?"

"Yes, massa," squeaked Sal from the profundities of the back premises.

"Why, Felix," continued our friend, "there has been another burglary last
night: My spleuchan, as Rory Macgregor calls it, has been ravished of its
treasures."

"How poetical you are this morning!—mounted on your Pegasus, I see,"

rejoined Felix.

"Better that than the horned animal that led me such a dance yesterday,"
quoth his friend, laughing. "But, joking apart, your man Twister must have
mistaken my tobacco for his own: He has emptied my tobacco-pouch, as
sure as fate, for none of my own people eat it; and the fellow has always
that capacious hole in his ugly phiz filled with it—with my prime patent
chewing tobacco, as I am a gentleman."

"Really," said Felix, who detested tobacco in all shapes, as I learned

afterwards, with an accent conveying as clearly as if he had said it—"I am
deuced glad to hear it." Then, "Confound it, are we never to get breakfast?
But when did you miss it, Jacob?"
 "Why, when we got out to ride over Mount Diablo, at the time the boys
were leading the gig-horses;—don't you recollect that I had to borrow
Twister's spurs, as Dare-devil always requires a persuader when a donkey is
in the path, and there were half-a-dozen, you know? So, stooping to adjust
them, out tumbled my spleuchan, it appears. I did not know it at the time,
indeed not until we were getting into the gig again, when Twister handed
the pouch, that was so well filled when it dropped, as lank and empty as
your own carcass, Flam."

"Poo, poo! what does it signify?" said his ally. "A fair exchange, Twig—
tobacco for spurs, you know—a simple quid pro quo."

"Shame!" said Jacob; "I thought you were above picking up such
crumbs, Felix. But here is breakfast—so, come."

We finished it; and as we were getting ready, I noticed Quacco and

Massa Twig in earnest confabulation, both apparently like to split with
suppressed laughter. At some of the latter's suggestions, our sable ally
absolutely doubled himself up, while the tears were running over his
cheeks. Immediately afterwards, Quacco began to busy himself, boring
some of the small hard seeds of the sand-box tree with his pricker, and
filling them with something; and then to poke and pare some pieces of
Jacob's patent flake tobacco with a knife, stuffing it into the latter's tobacco-
pouch. However, I paid no more attention to them, and we started; my
cousin Teemoty driving me in a chartered gig.

We shoved along at a brisk rate, close in the wake of Mr Twig's voiture,

and followed by a plump of black cavaliers—a beautiful little sumpter-
mule, loaded with two portmanteaus, leading the cavalcade; while Mr
Flamingo's servant Twister pricked a-head, for the twofold purpose of
driving the mule and clearing the road of impediments, such as a few stray
jackasses, or a group of negroes going to market, neither of whom ever get
out of one's way.

After proceeding about ten miles, the road wound into a cocoa-nut grove
close to the beach; indeed, the beach became the road for a good mile, with
the white surf rolling in and frothing over the beautiful hard sand, quickly
obliterating all traces of the wheels. Macadam was at a discount here. One
fine peculiarity of the West India seas is, independent of their crystal
clearness, they are always brimfull—no steamy wastes of slush and slime,
no muddy tideways. And overhead the sea-breeze was whistling through the
tall trees, making their long feather-like leaves rustle and rattle like a
thousand watchmen's alarms sprung in the midst of a torrent of rain, or a
fall of peas.

"Hillo! what is that?" as a cocoa-nut fell bang into the bottom of my gig,
and bounded out again like a foot-ball.

"Oh, only a cocoa-nut," said Twig, looking over his shoulder with the
usual knowing twist of his mouth, but without pulling up.

"Only a cocoa-nut! But it would have fractured a man's skull, I presume,

if it had struck him."

"A white man's certainly," quoth Flamingo, with all the coolness in life,
as if it had fallen a hundred miles from me, in place of barely shaving the
point of my nose: "But it has not hit you—a miss is as good as a mile, you
know; so suppose we go and bathe until they get dinner ready yonder. Let
us send the boys on to the tavern to order dinner. We are within two miles of
it, Jacob—eh?"

"No, no," quoth Twig; "come along a quarter of a mile further, and I will
show you a nook within the reef where we shall be safe from John Shark, or
rather the sharks will be safe from Flamingo's bones there. He would be like
a sackful of wooden ladles tossed to them. The fish would find him as
digestible as a bag of nutcrackers, seasoned with cocoa-nut shells—ah!—
but come along, come along. Oh such a bath, Mr Brail, as I will show you!"

We left the cocoa-nut grove, and when we arrived at the spot indicated
we got out to reconnoitre. There was a long reef, about musket-shot from
the beach at the widest, on the outside of which the swell broke in thunder,
the strong breeze blowing the spray and flakes of frothy brine back in our
faces, even where we stood.

The reef, like a bow, hemmed in a most beautiful semicircular pool of

green sea water, clear as crystal; its surface darkened and crisped by tiny
blue sparkling wavelets, which formed a glorious and pellucid covering to
the forest, if I may so speak, of coral branches and seaferns that covered the
bottom, and which, even where deepest, were seen distinctly in every fibre.
When you held your face close to the water, and looked steadily into its
pure depths, you saw the bottom at three fathoms perfectly alive, and
sparkling with shoals of fishes of the most glowing colours, gamboling in
the sun, birdlike amongst the boughs, as if conscious of their safety from
their ravenous comrades outside; while nothing could be more beautiful
than the smooth sparkling silver sand as the water shoaled towards the
beach. The last was composed of a belt of small transparent pebbles, about
ten yards wide, overhung by a rotten bank of turf of the greenest and most
fragrant description, that had been only sufficiently undermined by the lap
lapping of the water at tempestuous spring-tides (at no time rising here
above three feet), to form a continuous although rugged bench the whole
way along the shore.

"Now, if one were riding incautiously here, he might break his horse's
leg without much trouble," quoth Don Felix.

"Why, Jacob, speaking of horsemanship, how did you like your style of
immersion yesterday?—a novel sort of bathing-machine, to be sure."

"You be hanged, Felix," quoth his ally, with a most quizzical grin, as he
continued his peeling.

"Do you know I've a great mind to try an equestrian dip myself,"
persisted his friend. "Here, Twister—take off Monkey's saddle, and bring
him here."

"Oh, I see what you would be at," said Jacob. "Romulus, bring me Dare-
devil—so"—and thereupon, to my great surprise and amazement, it pleased
my friends to undress under a neighbouring clump of trees, and to send the
equipages and servants on to the tavern, about half a mile distant. They then
mounted two led horses, bare-backed, with watering bits, and, naked as the
day they were born, with the exception of a red handkerchief tied round Mr
Twig's head and down his redder cheeks, they dashed right into the sea.
 As cavalry was an arm I had never seen used with much effect at sea, I
swam out to the reef, and there plowtering about in the dead water, under
the lee of it, enjoyed the most glorious shower-bath from the descending
spray, that flew up and curled far overhead, like a snow storm, mingled with
ten thousand miniature rainbows. I had cooled myself sufficiently, and was
leisurely swimming for the shore.

"Now this is what I call bathing," quoth Twig, as he kept meandering

about on the snorting Dare-devil, who seemed to enjoy the dip as much as
his master—"I would back this horse against Bucephalus at swimming."

Here Flamingo's steed threw him, by rearing and pawing the water with
his fore legs and sinking his croup, so that his master, after an unavailing
attempt to mount him again, had to strike out for the beach, the animal
following, and splashing him, as if he wanted to get on his back by way of a
change.

"And that's what I call swimming," roared Don Felix. But he scarcely
had uttered the words when the horse made at him in earnest, and I thought
he had struck him with the near fore-foot.

"And that's what I call drowning," thought I, "or something deuced like
it."

However, he was really a good swimmer, and got to shore safe.

Master Twister had been all this time enacting groom of the stole to the
two equestrian bathers, and so soon as he had arrayed them, we proceeded
to the tavern, dined, and after enjoying a cool bottle of wine, continued our
journey to Ballywindle, which we hoped to reach shortly after nightfall.

The sun was now fast declining; I had shot ahead of my two cronies and
their outriders, I cannot now recollect why, and we were just entering a
grove of magnificent trees, with their hoary trunks gilded by his setting
effulgence, when Twister's head (he had changed places with Cousin
Teemoty, and was driving me) suddenly, to my great alarm, gave a sharp
crack, as if it had split open, and a tiny jet of smoke puffed out of his mouth
—I was all wonder and amazement, but before I could gather my wits about
me, he jumped from the voiture into the dirty ditch by the side of the road,
and popped his head, ears and all, below the stagnant green scum, while his
limbs, and all that was seen of him above water, quivered in the utmost
extremity of fear.

As soon as Twig and Flamingo came up, I saw that neither they nor
Serjeant Quacco could contain themselves for laughter. The latter was
scarcely able to sit his mule—at length he jumped, or rather tumbled, oft,
and pulled Twister out by the legs; who, the instant he could stand, and long
before he could see for the mud that filled his eyes, started up the road like
a demoniac, shouting, "Obeah, Obeah!" which so frightened the sumpter-
mule, that he was by this time alongside of, that she turned and came down,
rattling past us like a whirlwind, until she jammed between the stems of two
of the cocoa-nut trees with a most furious shock, when lo! the starboard
portmanteau she carried burst and blew up like a shell, and shirts, trowsers,
nightcaps, and handkerchiefs, of all colours, shapes, and sizes, were shot
hither and thither, upwards and downwards, this side and that, until the
neighbouring trees and bushes were hung with all manner of garments and
streamers, like a pawnbroker's shop.

Twig shouted, "There—that's your share of the joke, Felix—there goes

your patent portmanteau with the Bramah lock—see if the very brimstones
in which you gloried be not streaming like a commodore's broad pennant
from the top of the orange tree. The green silk night-cap on the prickly pear
—and the shirts and the vests, and the real bandanas—ha, ha, ha!"

"Ay, ay," shouted Flamingo, who had dismounted and was endeavouring
to catch the mule as she careered through the wood towards the sea, kicking
and flinging in a vain attempt to disentangle herself from the other
portmanteau, which had now turned under her belly, and the sumpter-saddle
that hung at her side; "and there goes your kit, Jacob, an offering to
Neptune bodily, mule and all"—as the poor beast dashed into the surf, after
having threaded through the stems of the trees without farther damage.

The cause of all this was no longer a mystery, for I had made my guess
already; but presently I was enlightened, if need had been, by friend
Quacco. He had, it appeared, with Mr Twig's sanction, charged certain of
the pieces of patent tobacco in the spleuchan with several small quantities
of detonating powder, enclosed in the glass-brittle seeds of the sand-box, as
a trap for Master Twister, who was suspected of making free with it—the
issue, so far as he was concerned, has been seen; but in the hurry of coming
away and packing up, instead of placing the bottle containing the powder in
Mr Flamingo's gun-case, where it should have been, he hurriedly dropped it
into his portmanteau, as Twister was packing it; so that when the sumpter
mule jambed between the trunks of the trees after it took fright it exploded
and blew up.

"I say, Massa Twister, you never make free with my patent tobacco?"

"Oh, oh, oh!" roared poor Twister, holding his jaws with both hands
—"Oh, massa, my tongue blow out—my palate blow down—de roof of my
mouse blow up—and all my teets blow clean gan—Oh no, massa, never,
never will touch him no more, massa—never, never no more."

"I'll answer for it you don't, my boy," quoth Jacob.

After picking up the fugitive and clambered garments as well as we

could, we travelled onwards for about two miles, when we struck inland,
and as the night fell entered a dark tree-shaded ravine, with a brawling
brook rushing through the bottom, up which we threaded our way by a
narrow road scarped out of the red earth of the hill side.

"Now, Mr Brail, give your horse the rein—let him pick his own steps, if
you please; for the road is cruelly cut up by the weather and waggons
hereabouts, and none of the widest either, as you may feel, for you can't see
it."

I took his advice, and soon found the advantage of it, as we came to
several groups of negroes sitting invariably on the inner side of the road,
which I would certainly have been tempted to avoid at my own peril; but
my horse was not so scrupulous, for he always poked his nose between
them and the bank, and snorted and nuzzled until they rose and shuffled out
of our way, either by creeping to the side next the ravine, or up on the bank;
presently the road widened, and we got along more comfortably.
 I could not but admire the thousands and tens of thousands of fire-flies
that spangled the gulf below us, in a tiny galaxy; they did not twinkle
promiscuously, but seemed to emit their small green lights by signal,
beginning at the head of the ravine, and glancing all the way down in a
wavy continuous lambent flash, every individual fly, as it were, taking the
time from his neighbour ahead. Then for a moment all would be dark again,
until the stream of sparkles flowed down once more from the head of the
valley, and again disappeared astern of us; while the usual West India
concert of lizards, beetles, crickets, and tree toads, filled the dull ear of
night with their sleepy monotony.

The night soon began to be heavily overcast, and as we entered below

some high wood the darkness would have become palpable, had it not been
for the fire-flies,—even darkness which might have been felt.

"I must heave to until I get my bat's eyes shipped, Mr Twig," said I—"I
can't see an inch before my nose."

"Then send Flamingo ahead, my dear fellow, for if he sees the length of
his we shall do—his proboscis is long enough to give us warning of any
impediment."

"What a clear glowworm-coloured light some of these insects do give,"

quoth I: "See that one creeping up the handle of my whip—it comes along
with its two tiny burners, like the lights in a distant carriage rolling towards
you."

"Come, you must get on, though, since we have not room to pass—no
time to study natural philosophy," said Twig; and I once more fanned my
horse into a gentle trot, with very much the sensation of one running
through an unknown sound in the night, without either chart or pilot.

After a little, I saw a cluster of red fire-flies, as I thought, before us. "Oh,
come along, I see now famously."

"Oh massa, massa!"—Crack!—I had got entangled with a string of

mules going to fetch a last turn of canes from the field; the red sparks that I
had seen ahead having proceeded from the pipes in the mouths of the
drivers. However there was no great damage done.

The rain now began to descend in torrents, with a roar like a cataract.
—"What uncommonly pleasant weather," thought I. "Why, Mr Twig, you
see I am a bad pilot—so, do you think you have room to pass me now? for,
to say the truth, I don't think I can see a yard of the road, and you know I
am an utter stranger here."

He could not pass, however, and at length I had to set Master Teemoty to
lead the horse. Presently I heard a splash.

"Hilloa, cousin Teemoty! where have you got to?"

"De Fairywell no tell lie, massa—De Devil's Golly,[1] dat has been dry
like one bone for tree mont, hab come down, massa—dat all."

[1] Gully—ravine or river course.

"Come down," said I; "I wish it had stayed up!"

"Ah!" said Twig,—"and we are to sleep here in the cold and damp, I
suppose—the fellow's a fool, and must have got off the path into some
puddle. We are a mile from the gully—let me see"—and before you could
have turned, Massa Jacob was splashing up to the knees alongside of Massa
Teemoty. However, he was right—it was only a streamlet—and we got
across without much difficulty; but in ten minutes the roar of a large torrent,
heard hoarse and loud above the sound of the rain, gave convincing proof
that we were at length approaching the gully—moreover, that it was down,
and that with a vengeance. We now found ourselves amongst a group of
negroes, who had also been stopped by the swollen stream. There was a
loud thundering noise above us on the left hand, which (we had now all
alighted) absolutely shook the solid earth under our feet, as if in that
direction the waters had been pitched from the mountain side headlong over
a precipice. From the same quarter, although quite calm otherwise, a strong
cold wind gushed in eddies and sudden gusts, as if from a nook or valley in
the hill-side, charged with a thick, wetting spray, that we could feel curling
and boiling about us, sometimes stronger and sometimes weaker, like the
undulations of a London fog. Close to our feet we could hear the river
tearing past us, with a great rushing and gurgling, occasionally intermingled
with the rasping and crashing of trees and floating spars, as they were
dashed along on the gushes and swirls of the stream; while every now and
then the warm water (for so it felt in contrast with the cold damp night-
breeze) surged a foot or two beyond its usual level, so as to cover us to the
ankle, and make us start back; and immediately ebb again. It was some
time, amidst this "groan of rock and roar of stream" before we could make
out any thing that the negroes about us said.

"Hillo," cried Twig—to be heard by each other we had to shout as loud

as we could—"hillo, friend Felix, here's a coil—what shall we do—sleep
here, eh?"

"We shall sleep soft, then," roared his friend in reply.

"As how, my lord?"

"Why, you may have mud of all consistencies, and of any depth."

"True, water beds are all the fashion now, and possibly mud ones might
be an improvement; but had we not better try back," I continued, as I really
began to think it no joke remaining where we were all night.

"A good idea," said Twig.

"About ship, then," quoth Flamingo.

"Wery good plan, wery good plan," shouted Cousin Teemoty; "but"——

"But, but, but—oh, confound your buts," roared Twig; "but what, sir?"

"Oh," said Tim, whose dignity was a little hurt, "noting, noting—no
reason why massa should not return—only Carrion-crow gully dat we lef
behind, will, by dis time, be twenty time more down as dis, dat all."

"And so it will—the boy is right," rejoined Jacob; "What is to be done?

Stop—I see, I see."

"The deuce you do! then you have good eyes," quoth Felix.

"I say, Flamingo, pick me up a stone that I can sling, and hold your
tongue; do, that's a good fellow."

"Sling? where is the Goliah you mean to attack?"

"Never you mind, Flam, but pick me up a stone that I can tie a string to,
will ye?—There, you absurd creature, you have given me one as round and
smooth as a cricket ball; how can I fasten a string round it?—give me a
longish one, man—one shaped like a kidney-potato or your own nose, you
blundering good-for-nothing—ah, that will do. Now, some string, boys—
string."

Every negro carries a string of one kind or another with him in the crown
of his hat, and three or four black paws were in an instant groping for Jacob
Twig's hand in the dark with pieces of twine.

"Hillo, what is that?" as an auxiliary-current, more than ankle deep,

began to flow down the road with a loud ripple from behind us, thus
threatening to cut off our retreat—"Mind we are not in a scrape here!" cried
I.

"If we be, we can't better it," shouted Twig—"Here, gentlemen, give me

your cards, will ye?'

"Cards—cards!" ejaculated Flamingo and I in a breath.

"Yes—your calling-cards; do grope for them—make haste."

He got the cards, and all was silent except the turmoil of the elements for
a few seconds. At length, in a temporary lull of the rain, I thought I heard
the shout of a human voice from the opposite bank, blending with the roar
of the stream.
 "Ay, ay," cried Jacob—"there, don't you hear people on the other side?—
so here goes."

"Hillo, who the deuce has knocked off my hat?" cried Flamingo.

"Why don't you stand on one side then, or get yourself shortened by the
knees? such a steeple is always in the way," bawled Twig. "Leave me scope
to make my cast now, will ye—don't you see I want to throw the stone with
the cards across amongst the people on the opposite bank—There," and he
made another cast—"ah, I have caught a fish this time—more string,
Teemoty—more string—or they will drag it out of my hand. Now some one
has got a precious pelt on the skull with the kidney potato, Felix, as I am a
gentleman; but he understands us, whoever he may be that has got hold of it
—feel here—how he jerks the string without hauling on it—wait—wait!"

Presently the line was let go at the opposite side, and our friend hauled it
in—it had been cut short off, and instead of the stone and cards, a negro
clasp knife was now attached to it.

"There—didn't I tell you—there's a barbarian telegraph for you—there's

a new invented code of signals—now you shall see how my scheme will
work," cried Jacob. However, near a quarter of an hour elapsed without any
thing particular occurring, during which time, we distinctly heard shouting
on the other side, as if to attract our attention, but we could not make out
what was said.

At length we observed a red spark, glancing and disappearing like a will-

o'-the-wisp as it zigzagged amongst the dark bushes, down the hill side
above. Presently we lost sight of it and all was dark again. However, just as
I began to lose all hope of the success of Massa Twig's device, the light
again appeared coming steadily down the road opposite us. It approached
the impassable ford, and we now saw that it was a lantern carried by a
negro, who was lighting the steps of a short squat figure of a man, dressed
in a fustian coatee and nankeen trowsers, with an umbrella over his head.
"I've caught my fish—I've caught my fish—Rory Macgregor himself, or I
am a baboon," shouted Twig, as the party he spoke of came down to the
water's edge, and, holding up the lantern above his head, peered across the
gully with outstretched neck, apparently in a vain attempt to make us out.
 By the light we saw a whole crowd of poor, drenched, stormstaid devils,
in their blue pennistone greatcoats, shivering on the opposite bank. The
white man appeared to be giving them instructions, as two of them
immediately disappeared up the hill-side, whence he had descended; while
several of the others entered a watchman's hut that we could observe close
to the waterside, and fetched some wood and dry branches from it, with
which they began to kindle a fire under a projecting cliff, which soon
burned up brightly, and showed us whereabouts we were.

The scene was striking enough. A quantity of dry splinters of some kind
of resinous wood being heaped on the fire, it now blazed up brilliantly in
massive tongues of flame, that glanced as they twined up the fissures,
scorching the lichens into sudden blackness, and licking, like fiery serpents,
the tortuous fretwork of naked roots depending from the trees that grew on
the verge of the bank above, which spread like a net over the face of the
bald grey rock; and lighting up the fringe of dry fibres depending from the
narrow eave of red earth that projected over the brink of the precipice,
under which the bank appeared white and dusty, but lower down, where wet
by the beating of the rain, it was red, and glittering with pebbles, as if it had
been the wall of a salt mine in Cheshire.

The bright glare, and luminous smoke of the fire, in which a number of
birds, frightened from their perches, glanced about like sparks, blasted the
figures of such of the negroes as stood beyond it into the appearance of
demons—little Rory Macgregor looking, to use his own phrase, like the deil
himsell, while those of them who intervened between us and the fire seemed
magnified into giants—their dark bodies edged with red flame; while every
tree, and stock, and stone appeared as if half bronze and half red-hot iron—
a shadock growing close by, looked as if hung with clusters of red-hot
cannon balls.

Our own party was very noticeable. I was leaning on the neck of my gig-
horse, with his eyes glancing, and the brazen ornaments of his harness
flashing like burnished gold. Abreast of me were Massas Twig, Flamingo,
and Cosin Teemoty, wet as muck, and quite as steamy, to use a genteel
phrase, with our cold drenched physiognomies thrust into the light, and the
sparkling rain-drops hanging at our noses; Jacob's glazed hat glancing as if
his caput had been covered with a glass porringer; while the group of
mounted negroes and led horses in the background, with the animals
pawing and splashing in the red stream that ran rippling and twinkling
down the road, and the steam of our rapid travelling rising up like smoke
above them, gave one a very lively idea of a cavalry picquet on the qui vive.

On our larboard hand the mountain ascended precipitously, in all the

glory of magnificent trees, sparkling with diamond water-drops, stupendous
rocks, and all that sort of thing; with the swollen waters thundering and
chafing, and foaming down a dark deep cleft over a ledge of stone about
thirty feet high, in a solid mass, which in the descent took a spiral turn, as if
it had been ejected from a tortuous channel above, and then sending up a
thick mist, that rose boiling amongst the dark trees. From the foot of this
fall the torrent roared along its overflowing channel in whirling eddies that
sparkled in the firelight, towards where we stood; the red stream appearing,
by some deception of the sight, to be convex, or higher in the middle than
the sides, and semifluid, as if composed of earth and water; while trees, and
branches, and rolling stones were launched and trundled along as if borne
on a lava stream.

As we looked, the bodies of two bullocks and a mule came past, rolling
over and over, legs, tails, and heads, in much admired confusion.

On the starboard hand the ravine sunk down as dark as Erebus; and now
the weather clearing, disclosed in that direction, through storm-rents of the
heavy clouds, shreds of translucent blue sky, sparkling with bright stars; and
lo! the fair moon once more!—her cold, pale-green light struggling with the
hot red glare of the fire, as she reposed on the fleecy edge of that dark——

"Confound it, what's that—what's that, Mr Twig?"

"An owl, Master Brail—an owl which the light has dazzled, and that has
flown against your head by mistake—but catch, man—catch"—as he
sprang into the water up to the knees to secure my hat, that the bird of
Minerva had knocked off—and be hanged to it. "An owl may be a wise
bird, but it is a deuced blind one to bounce against your head as
unceremoniously as if it had been a pumpkin or a calabash."
 Little Rory Macgregor had all this time remained at the edge of the
stream, squatted on his hams like a large bull-frog, and apparently, if we
could judge from his action, shouting at the top of his voice; but it was all
dumb show to us, or very nearly so, as we could not make out one word that
he said.

Flamingo confronted him, assuming the same attitude. "See how he has
doubled up his long legs—there, now—said the grasshopper to the frog,"
quoth Twig to me. Here friend Felix made most energetic signs, a-la
Grimaldi, that he wanted some food and drink.

Rory nodded promptly, as much as to say, "I understand you;" indeed it

appeared that he had taken the hint before, for the two men that we had seen
ascend the mountain-road, now returned; one carrying a joint of roast meat
and a roast fowl, and the other with a bottle in each hand.

The puzzle now was, "how were the good things to be had across?" but
my friends seemed up to every emergency. In a moment Flamingo had
ascended a scathed stump that projected a good way over the gully, with
Twig's string and stone in his hand; the latter enabling him to pitch the line
at Rory's feet, who immediately made the joint of meat fast, which Don
Felix swung across, and untying it, chucked it down to us who stood below;
the fowl, and the rum, and the bottle of lemonade, or beverage, as it is
called in Jamaica, were secured in like manner.

"So," said our ally, "we shan't starve for want of food, anyhow, whatever
we may do of cold." But we were nearer being released than we thought;
for suddenly, as if from the giving way of some obstruction below that had
dammed up the water in the gully, it ebbed nearly two feet, of which we
promptly availed ourselves to pass over to the other side of the Devil's
Gully. But, notwithstanding, this was a work of no small difficulty, and
even considerable danger. Being safely landed, and having thanked Mr
Macgregor, who owned a very fine coffee property in the neighbourhood,
for his kindness, we mounted our vehicles once more, and drove rapidly out
of the defile, now lit by the moon, and in a quarter of an hour found
ourselves amongst the Works; that is, in the very centre of the mill-yard of
Ballywindle.
 CHAPTER VIII.

MY UNCLE.

Here, late as it was, all was bustle and activity; the boiling-house was
brilliantly lighted up, the clouds of white luminous vapour steaming
through the apertures in the roof; while the negroes feeding the fires,
sheltered under the stokehole arches from the weather, and almost
smothered amongst heaps of dry cane-stalks, or trash, as it is called, from
which the juice had been crushed, looked in their glancing nakedness like
fiends, as their dark bodies flitted between us and the glowing mouths of
the furnaces. A little farther on we came to the two cone-roofed mill-houses,
one of which was put in motion by a spell of oxen, the other being worked
by mules, while the shouting of the drivers, the cries of the boilermen to the
firemakers to make stronger fires, the crashing of the canes as they were
crushed in the mills, the groaning and squealing of the machinery, the
spanking of whips, the lumbering and rattling of wains and waggons, the
hot dry axles screaming for grease, and the loud laugh and song rising
occasionally shrill above the Babel sounds, absolutely confounded me.

We stopped at the boiling-house door, and asked the book-keeper on

duty, a tall cadaverous-looking young man, dressed in a fustian jacket and
white trowsers, who appeared more than half asleep, if the overseer was at
home. He said he was, and, as we intended to leave our horses at his house,
we turned their heads towards it, guided by one of the negroes from the
mill.

The peep I had of the boiling-house was very enlivening;—for,

independently of the regular watch of boiler-negroes, who were ranged
beside the large poppling and roaring coppers, each having a bright copper
laddie, with a long shank like a boathook, in his hands, it was at this time
filled with numbers of the estate's people, some getting hot liquor, others
sitting against the wall, eating their suppers by the lamp light, and not a few
quizzing and loitering about in the mist of hot vapour, as if the place had
been a sort of lounge, instead of a busy sugar manufactory—a kind of sable
soirée.

By the time we arrived in front of the overseer's house, we found the

door surrounded by a group of four patriarchal-looking negroes and an old
respectable-looking negro woman. The men were clad in Osnaburg frocks,
like those worn by waggoners in England, with blue frieze jackets over
them, and white trowsers. The old dame was rigged in a man's jacket also,
over as many garments apparently as worn by the grave-digger in Hamlet. I
had never seen such a round ball of a body. They were all hat-in-hand, with
Madras handkerchiefs bound round their heads, and leaning on tall staffs
made from peeled young hardwood trees, the roots forming very fantastical
tops. Their whips were twisted round these symbols of office, like the
snakes round the caduceus of their tutelary deity, Mercury. These were the
drivers of the various gangs of negroes on the estate, who were waiting to
receive busha's[1] orders for the morrow.

[1] The West India name for overseer, or manager of an estate; a

corruption, no doubt, of bashaw.

On seeing us, the overseer hastily dismissed his levee, and ordered his
people to take charge of our horses.

"Mr Frenche is at home, I hope?" said Mr Twig.

"Oh, yes, sir—all alone up at the great house there," pointing to a little
shed of a place, perched on an insulated rocky eminence, to the left of the
abode he himself occupied, which overlooked the works and whole
neighbourhood.

This hill, rising as abruptly from the dead level of the estate as if it had
been a rock recently dropped on it,—rather a huge areolite, by the way,—
was seen in strong relief against the sky, now clear of clouds, and
illuminated by the moon.

At the easternmost end of the solitary great house—in shape like a

Chinese pavilion, with a projecting roof, on a punch bowl, that adhered to
the sharp outline of the hill like a limpet to a rock—a tall solitary palm shot
up and tossed its wide-spreading, fan-like leaves in the night wind high into
the pure heaven. The fabric was entirely dark—not a soul moving about it
—nothing living in the neighbourhood apparently, if we except a goat or
two moving slowly along the ridge of the hill. At the end of the house next
the palm-tree there was a low but steep wooden stair, with a landing-place
at top, surrounded by a simple wooden railing, so that it looked like a
scaffold.

"There is Mr Frenche, sir," continued busha, pointing to the figure of a

man lounging in a low chair on the landing place, with his feet resting on
the rail before him, and far higher than his head, which leant against the
wall of the house, as if he had been a carronade planted against the opposite
hill. Under the guidance of one of the overseer's waiting boys, we
commenced the zig-zag ascent towards my uncle's dwelling, and as we
approached, the feeling of desolateness that pressed on my heart increased,
from the extreme stillness of the place even when near to it. Light, or other
indication of an inhabited mansion, there was none—even the goats had
vanished.

"Cold comfort in prospect for me," thought I; "but allons, let us see,"—
and we moved on until we came to a small outhouse beside a gate, which
seemed to open into the enclosure, in the centre of which stood the solitary
building.

"How terribly still every thing is about Mr Frenche's domicile," said I, as

we paused until Flamingo undid the fastening of the gate. "And, pray, what
hovel is this that we have come to?"

"This?—Oh, it is the kitchen," quoth Twig. "Stop, I will knock up the

people."
 "Don't do any such thing," said Flamingo, who, I saw, was after some
vagary. "Here, Mr Brail, get up the stair,"—we had now reached the small
platform on which the house stood,—"and creep under his legs, will ye—
there, get into the house and conceal yourself, and Twig and I will rouse
him, and have some fun before you make your appearance."

I gave in to the frolic of the moment, and slipped silently up the few
steps of the steep stair, as I was desired. There, on the landing-place,
reposed, al fresco, Uncle Lathom, sure enough—his chair swung back, his
head resting on the door-post, and his legs cocked up, as already described,
on the outer railing of the stair. He was sound asleep, and snoring most
harmoniously; but just as I stole up, and was in the very act of creeping
beneath the yoke to get past him, I touched his limbs slightly; but the start
made him lose his balance and fall back into the house, and there I was, like
a shrimp in the claws of a lobster, firmly locked in the embrace of my
excellent relative—for although his arms were not round my neck, his legs
were.

"Who is that, and what is that, and what have I got hold of now?" roared
Uncle Latham, in purest Tipperary.

"It is me, sir," I shouted as loud as I could bellow; for as we rolled over
and over on the head of the stair, I discovered he had spurs on; but the devil
a bit would he relax in his hold of my neck with his legs,—"me, your
dutiful nephew, Benjamin Brail—but, for goodness sake, mind you have
spurs on, uncle."

"My nephew—my nephew, Benjamin Brail, did you say?—Oh, murder,

fire, and botheration of all sorts—spurs, sir?—spurs?—Hookey, but I'll find
stronger fare than spurs for you—You are a robber, sir—a robber—Murphy,
you villain—Murphy—Dennis—Potatoblossom—bring me a handsaw, till I
cut his throat—or a gimblet—or any other deleterious eatable—Oh, you
thieves of the world, why don't you come and help your master?—Lights,
boys—lights—hubaboo!"

By this I had contrived to wriggle out of my Irish pillory, and to

withdraw my corpus into the house, where I crept behind a leaf of the door
—any thing to be out of the row. I could now hear my uncle crawling about
the dark room like the aforesaid lobster, disconsolate for the loss of its prey,
arguing with himself aloud whether he were awake, or whether it was not
all a drame, as he called it;—and then shouting for his servants at one
moment, and stumbling against the table, or falling rattle over a lot of
chairs, that all seemed to have placed themselves most provokingly in his
way, the next. During his soliloquy, I heard Twig and Flamingo's suppressed
laughter at the other end of the room. At length Mr Frenche thundered in his
gropings against the sideboard, when such a clash and clang of glasses
arose, as if he had been literally the bull in the china shop.

"Ah," he said, "it must be all a drame, and looking at people drinking,
has made me dry—so let me wet my whistle a bit—here's the beverage, so
—now—ah, this is the rum bottle—I know it by the smell—and what the
devil else should I know it by in the dark before tasting, I should like to
know?—he! he!—if I could but lay my paw on a tumbler now, or a glass of
any kind—not one to be found, I declare—Murphy, you villain, why don't
you come when I call you, sirrah?"—There was now a concerto of
coughing, and sneezing, and oich, oiching, and yawning, as if from beneath.
—"Will these lazy rascals never make their appearance?" continued Mr
Frenche, impatiently—"Well, I cannot find even a teacup to make some
punch in—hard enough this in a man's own house, any how—but I have the
materials—and—and—now, for the fun of the thing—I will mix it Irish
fashion—deuce take me if I don't," and thereupon I heard him gurgle,
gurgle something out of one bottle—and then a long gurgle, gurgle, gurgle,
out of another, apparently, for the gurgling was on different keys,—both
followed by a long expiration. He then gave several jumps on the floor.

He had, as I guessed, first swallowed the raw caulker from the rum
decanter, and then sent down the lemonade to take care of it. "Now, that
rum is very strong—stop, let me qualify it a bit with some more beverage—
how thirsty I am, to be sure—murder!—confound that wide-necked
decanter." Here I could hear the liquid splash all over him. "There—so
much for having a beautiful small mouth—why, Rory Macgregor, with that
hole in his face from ear to ear, would have drunk you the whole bottle
without spilling a drop, and here am I, suffocated and drowned entirely, and
as wet as if I had been dragged through the Bog of Allan—Murphy, you
scoundrel?"
 Anon, two negro servants, stretching and yawning, each with a candle in
his hand, made their appearance, one in his shirt, with his livery coat
hanging over his head, the cape projecting forward, and a sleeve hanging
down on each side; the other had his coat on certainly, but stern foremost,
and not another rag of any kind or description whatever, saving and
excepting his Kilmarnock nightcap.

By the illumination which those ebony candlesticks furnished, I now

could see about me. The room we were in was about twenty feet square,
panelled, ceiled, and floored—it looked like a large box—with unpainted,
but highly-polished hard-wood, of the colour of very old mahogany—
handsomer than any oak panelling I had ever seen. There was a folding door
that communicated with the front piazza, out of which we had scrambled—-
another, that opened into a kind of back dining-hall, or large porch, and two
on each hand, which opened into bedrooms. A sideboard was placed by the
wall to the right, between the two bedroom doors, at which stood a tall and
very handsome elderly gentleman, who, if I had not instantly known to be
my uncle, from his likeness to my poor mother, I might, after the adventures
of the day, and the oddities of messieurs my friends—the Twig of the
Dream, and the Flamingo of Peaweep, Snipe, and Flamingo—have
suspected some quiz or practical joke in the matter.

The gentleman, evidently not broad awake yet, was dressed in light-
coloured kerseymere small-clothes, top-boots, white vest, and blue coat—
he was very bald, with the exception of two tufts of jet-black hair behind his
ears, blending into very bushy whiskers. His forehead was round and
beetling—you would have said he was somewhat bullet-headed; had the
obduracy of the feature not been redeemed by his eyebrows, which were
thick, well arched, and, like his hair and whiskers, jet-black—and also by
his genuine Irish sparklers, dark, flashing, and frolicsome.

His complexion was of the clearest I had seen in Jamaica—I could never
have guessed that he had been above a few weeks from the "First gem of
the Sea,"—and his features generally large and well formed. There was a
playful opening of the lips every now and then, disclosing nice ivory teeth,
and evincing, like his eyes, the native humour of his country.

"So, Master Murphy, you are there at last," said he.

 "Yes, massa—yes, massa."

"Pray, can you tell me, Murphy, if any one has arrived here—any
stranger come into the house while I slept;" then aside, as the players say,
"or has it really and truly been all a drame?"

"No see noting, massa—nor nobody"—[yawn.]

"You didn't, oh—there, do you see any thing now?" said my uncle—as
he took the candle out of the black paw, and put the lighted end, with all the
composure in life, into Murphy's open mouth, where it shone through his
cheeks like a rushlight in a winter turnip, until it burned the poor fellow,
and he started back, overturning his sleepy coadjutor, Dennis, headlong on
the floor. On which signal, Twig and Flamingo, who were all this time
coiled up like two baboons below the sideboard, choking with laughter,
caught Uncle Frenche by the legs, a limb a piece, who thereupon set up a
regular howl—"ach, murder! murder! it is abducted, and ravished, and
married against my will I shall be—murder!"—as he in turn capsized over
the prostrate negroes, and all was confusion and vociferation once more—
until my two travelling friends, who had cleverly slipped out of the mêlée,
while my uncle was clapperclawing with his serving-men, returned from the
pantry, whither they had betaken themselves; and now stood on the original
field of battle, the landing-place of the stair, each with a lighted candle in
his hand, and making believe to be in great amazement at the scene before
them.

"Heyday," quoth Twig, "what's the matter, Master Frenche?—what

uproar is this in the house?—we heard it at the Devil's Gully, two miles off,
believe me."

"Uproar?" shouted Uncle Lathom, still sitting on the floor, scratching his
poll—"uproar, were you pleased to say?—pray, who the mischief are you,
gentlemen, who conceive yourselves privileged to speak of any little noise I
choose to make in my own house?—tell me in an instant, or by the powers I
will shoot you for a brace of robbers"—clapping the lemonade decanter,
which had all this time escaped by a miracle, to his shoulder, blunderbuss
fashion.
 Here gradually slewing himself round on his tail, and rubbing his eyes,
he at length confronted me, as I sat coiled up behind the leaf of the door
—"Why, here is a second edition of my drame." The very absurd expression
of face with which he said this, and regarded me, fairly upset my gravity,
already heavily taxed, and losing all control, I laughed outright.

"Another of them! and who may you be, young gentleman?—you seem
to find yourself at home, at any rate, I think."

"Come, come," said Flamingo—"enough of this nonsense—don't you

know your friends Twig and Flamingo, Mr Frenche?"

"Twig and Flamingo, did you say?—Twig and Flamingo—Twig—oh

dear, oh dear—it is no drame after all—my dear fellows, how are you?—
why, what a reception I have given you—you must have thought me mad?"
By this time he had got on his legs again, and was welcoming my fellow-
travellers with great cordiality, which gave me time to resume the
perpendicular also. "I am so glad to see you—why, Jacob, I did not look for
you until Tuesday next, but you are the welcomer, my good boy—most
heartily welcome—how wet you must have got, though—boys, get supper
—Felix, I am so rejoiced to see you—supper, you villains—why, we shall
have a night on't, my lads."

"Give me leave to introduce this young gentleman to you first," said

Twig, very gravely, leading me forward into the light, "your nephew, Mr
Benjamin Brail."

"My nephew!" quoth Mr Frenche—"why, there's my drame again—my

nephew!—when did he arrive?"—here he held a candle close to my face, as
if my nose had been a candle-wick, and he meant to light it; then fumbling
in his bosom with the other hand, he drew forth a miniature of my mother
—"my nephew!—my poor sister's boy, Benjie!—as like her as possible, I
declare—how are you, Benjamin?—oh, Benjie, I am rejoiced to see you—
my heart is full, full—how are"——And as the tear glistened in his eye, he
made as if he would have taken me in his arms, when a sudden light seemed
to flash on him, and he turned sharply round to Twig—"If you are playing
me a trick here, Jacob; if you are trifling with the old man's feelings, and
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