Vailima Letters

pia, Samoa, Monday

mark is this: If I go out and make sixpence, bossing my labourers and plying the cutlass or the spade, idiot conscience applauds me; if I sit in the house and make twenty pounds, idiot conscience wails over my neglect and the day wasted. For near a fortnight I did not go beyond the verandah; then I found my rush of work run out, and went down for the night to Apia; put in Sunday afternoon with our consul, ‘a nice young man,’ dined with my friend H. J. Moors in the evening, went to church — no less — at the white and half-white church — I had never been before, and was much interested; the woman I sat next looked a full-blood native, and it was in the prettiest and readiest English that she sang the hymns; back to Moors’, where we yarned of the islands, being both wide wanderers, t

, alii’ — ‘Tofa, soifua!’ I put on Jack up the steep path, till he is all as white as shaving stick — Brown’s euxesis, wish I had some — past Tanugamanono, a bush village — see into the houses as I pass — they are open sheds scattered on a green — see the brown folk sitting there, suckling kids, sleeping on their stiff wooden pillows — then on through the wood path — and here I find the mysterious white man (poor devil!) with his twenty years’ certificate of good behaviour as a book-keeper, frozen out by the strikes in the col

u details and news. That

at I did in the Janet Nicoll, under the most ungodly circumstances, I fear will want a lot of suppling and lightening, but I hope to have your remarks in a month or two upon that point. It seems a long while since I have heard from you. I do hope you are well. I am wonderful, but tired from so much work; ’tis really immense what I have done; in the South Sea book I have fifty pages copied fair, some

oors, and I must set in consequence to farmering. I stuck a good while on the way up, for the path there is largely my own handiwork, and there were a lot of sprouts and saplings and stones to be removed

cannot be

he other day; how hard it was that the bad banana flourished wild, and the good must be weeded and tended; and I had not the heart to tell him how fortunate they were here, and how hungry were other lands by comparison. The ascent of this lovely lane of my dry stream filled me with delight. I could not but be reminded of old Mayne Reid, as I have been more than once since I came to the tropics; and I thought, if Reid had been still living, I would have written to tell him that, for, me, it had come true; and I thought, forbye, that, if the great powers go on as they are going, and the Chief Justice delays, it would come truer still; and the war-conch will sound in the hills, and my ho

an old path. So I laboured till I was in such a state that Carolina Wilhelmina Skeggs could scarce have found a name for it. Thereon desisted; returned to the stream; made my way down that stony track to the garden, where the smoke was still hanging and the sun was still in the high tree-tops, and so home. Here, fondly supposing my long day was over, I rubbed down; exquisite agony; water spreads the poison of these weeds; I got it all over my hands, on my chest, in my eyes, and presently, while eating an orange, a la Raratonga, burned my lip

d watching; helps Fanny; is civil, kindly, thoughtful; O si sic semper! But will he be ‘his sometime self throughout the year’? Anyway, he has deserved of us, and he must disappoint me sharply ere I give him up. — Bene — or Peni-Ben, in plain English — is supposed to be my ganger; the Lord love him! God made a truckling coward, there is his full history. He cannot tell me what he wants; he dares not tell me what is wrong; he dares not transmit my orders or translate my censures. And with all this, honest, sober, industrious, miserably smiling over the miserable issue of his own unmanliness. — Paul — a German — cook and steward — a glutton of work — a splendid fellow; drawbacks, three: (1) no cook; (2) an inveterate bungler; a man with twent

and be jowned to

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sda

ter-writing; you sit down every day an

find Simele; he give you work. Peni, you tell this boy he go find Simele; suppose Simele no give him work, you tell him go ‘way. I no want him here. That boy no good.’ — Peni (from the distance in reassuring tones), ‘All right, sir!’ — Fanny (after a long pause), ‘Peni, you tell that boy go find Simele! I no want him stand here all day. I no pay that boy. I see him all day. He no do nothing.’ — Luncheon, beef, soda-scones, fried bananas, pine-apple in claret, coffee. Try to write a poem; no go. Play the flageolet. Then sneakingly off to farmering and pioneering. Four gangs at work on our place; a lively scene; axes crashing and smoke blowing; all the kn

led, and came up with that sob of death that one gets to know so well; great, soft, sappy trees fell at a lick of the cutlass, little tough switches laughed at

ighbours? At times I thought the blows were echoes; at times I thought the laughter was from birds. For our birds are strangely human in their calls. Vaea mountain about sundown sometimes rings with shrill cries, like the hails of merry, scattered children. As a matter of fact, I believe stealthy wood-cutters from Tanugamanono were above me in the wood and answerable for the b

rom the oven, pine-apple in claret. These are great days; we have bee

(Hist. Vail

xtra coverings, I know not at what hour — it was as bright as day. The moon right over Vaea — near due west, the birds strangely silent, and the wood of the house tingling with cold; I believe it must have been 60 degrees! Consequence; Fanny has a headache and is wretched, and I could do

thing has now taken charge of this island, and men fight it, with torn hands, for bread and life. A singular, insidious thing, shrinking and biting like a weasel; clutching by its roots as a limpet clutches to a rock. As I fought him, I bettered some verses in my poem, the Woodman; the only thought I gave to letters. Though the kuikui was thick, there was but a small patch of it, and when I was done I attacked the wild lime, and had a hand-to-hand skirmish with its spines and elastic suckers. All this time, close by, in the cleared space of the garden, Lafaele and Mauga were digging. Suddenly quoth Lafaele, ‘Somebody

gain — he made a stair by which the pigs will probably escape this evening, and she was near weeping. Impossible to blame the indefatigable fellow; energy is too rare and goodwill too noble a thing to discourag

y — I

tui is the word by rights) — the tuitui is all out of the paddock — a fenced park between the house and boundary; Peni’s men start today on the road; the garden is part burned, part dug; and Henry, at the head of a troop of underpa

forts are only like the performance of an actor, the thing of a moment, and the wood will silently and swiftly heal them up with fresh effervescence; the cunning sense of the tuitui, suffering itself to be touched with wind-swayed grasses and not minding — but let the grass be moved by a

Woods of

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in the

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Hour of

ay of Ve

well. Ulufanua is a lovely Samoan word, ulu=grove; fanua=land; grove-land — ‘the tops of the high trees.’ Savao, ‘sacred

t, something it seemed like asthma — I trust not. I suppose Lloyd will be about, so you can give him the benefi

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is man’s impulse to strike out. One thing that takes and holds me is to see the strange variation in the propagation of alarm among these rooted beasts; at times it spreads to a radius (I speak by the guess of the eye) of five or six inches; at times only one individual plant appears frightened at a time. We tried how long it took one to recover; ’tis a sanguine creature; it is all abroad again before (I guess again) two minutes. It is odd how difficult in this world it is to be armed. The double armour of this plant betrays it. In a thick tuft, where the leaves disappear, I thrust in my hand, and the bite of the thorn

mentar

s not from the planter but from a less e

in time, I shall get the whole thing in form. Now, up to date, that is all my design, and I beg to warn you till we have the whole (or much) of the stuff together, you can hardly judge — and I can hardly judge. Such a mass of stuff is to be handled, if possible without repetition — so much foreign matter to be introduced — if possible with perspicuity — and, as much as can be, a spirit of narrative t

t home is, I imagine, rot — and slovenly rot — and some of

You never said thank-you for the handsome tribute addressed to you from Ape

hou the po

oriaceous

your faults more t

far from hand

a spirit of friendship, I have th

ient humb

as

and his feet will have been in the Monument —

ch eloquenc

m,

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pigra

Louis S

plicit