Chapter XXIII: of The Wrecker, then Belle, Lloyd, and I go up and make (2)

On Dec. 30th I rode down with Belle to go to (if you please) the Fancy Ball. When I got to the beach, I found the barometer was below 29 deg., the wind still in the east and steady, but a huge offensive continent of clouds and vapours forming to leeward. It might be a hurricane; I dared not risk getting caught away from my work, and, leaving Belle, returned at once to Vailima. Next day--yesterday--it was a tearer; we had storm shutters up; I sat in my room and wrote by lamplight--ten pages, if you please, seven of them draft, and some of these compiled authorities, so that was a brave day's work. About two a huge tree fell within sixty paces of our house; a little after, a second went; and we sent out boys with axes and cut down a third, which was too near the house, and buckling like a fishing rod. At dinner we had the front door closed and shuttered, the back door open, the lamp lit. The boys in the cook-house were all out at the cook-house door, where we could see them looking in and smiling. Lauilo and Faauma waited on us with smiles. The excitement was delightful. Some very violent squalls came as we sat there, and every one rejoiced; it was impossible to help it; a soul of putty had to sing. All night it blew; the roof was continually sounding under missiles; in the morning the verandahs were half full of branches torn from the forest. There was a last very wild squall about six; the rain, like a thick white smoke, flying past the house in volleys, and as swift, it seemed, as rifle balls; all with a strange, strident hiss, such as I have only heard before at sea, and, indeed, thought to be a marine phenomenon. Since then the wind has been falling with a few squalls, mostly rain. But our road is impassable for horses; we hear a schooner has been wrecked and some native houses blown down in Apia, where Belle is still and must remain a prisoner. Lucky I returned while I could! But the great good is this; much bread-fruit and bananas have been destroyed; if this be general through the islands, famine will be imminent; and _whoever blows the coals, there can be no war_. Do I then prefer a famine to a war? you ask. Not always, but just now. I am sure the natives do not want a war; I am sure a war would benefit no one but the white officials, and I believe we can easily meet the famine--or at least that it can be met. That would give our officials a legitimate opportunity to cover their past errors.

_Jan. 2nd._--I woke this morning to find the blow quite ended. The heaven was all a mottled grey; even the east quite colourless; the downward slope of the island veiled in wafts of vapour, blue like smoke; not a leaf stirred on the tallest tree; only, three miles away below me on the barrier reef, I could see the individual breakers curl and fall, and hear their conjunct roaring rise, as it still rises at 1 P.M., like the roar of a thoroughfare close by. I did a good morning's work, correcting and clarifying my draft, and have now finished for press eight chapters, ninety-one pages, of this piece of journalism. Four more chapters, say fifty pages, remain to be done; I should gain my wager and finish this volume in three months, that is to say, the end should leave me per February mail; I cannot receive it back till the mail of April. Yes, it can be out in time; pray God that it be in time to help.

How do journalists fetch up their drivel? I aim only at clearness and the most obvious finish, positively at no higher degree of merit, not even at brevity--I am sure it could have been all done, with double the time, in two-thirds of the space. And yet it has taken me two months to write 45,500 words; and, be damned to my wicked prowess, I am proud of the exploit! The real journalist must be a man not of brass only, but bronze. Chapter IX. gapes for me, but I shrink on the margin, and go on chattering to you. This last part will be much less offensive (strange to say) to the Germans. It is Becker they will never forgive me for; Knappe I pity and do not dislike; Becker I scorn and abominate. Here is the tableau. I. Elements of Discord: Native. II. Elements of Discord: Foreign. III. The Sorrows of Laupepa. IV. Brandeis. V. The Battle of Matautu. VI. Last Exploits of Becker. VII. The Samoan Camps. VIII. Affairs of Lautii and Fangalii. IX. "_Furor Consularis_." X. The Hurricane. XI. Stuebel Recluse. XII. The Present Government. I estimate the whole roughly at 70,000 words. Should anybody ever dream of reading it, it would be found amusing. 70000/300 = 233 printed pages; a respectable little five-bob volume, to bloom unread in shop windows. After that, I'll have a spank at fiction. And rest? I shall rest in the grave, or when I come to Italy. If only the public will continue to support me! I lost my chance not dying; there seems blooming little fear of it now. I worked close on five hours this morning; the day before, close on nine; and unless I finish myself off with this letter, I'll have another hour and a half, or _aiblins twa_, before dinner. Poor man, how you must envy me, as you hear of these orgies of work, and you scarce able for a letter. But Lord, Colvin, how lucky the situations are not reversed, for I have no situation, nor am fit for any. Life is a steigh brae. Here, have at Knappe, and no more clavers!

_Jan. 3rd._--There was never any man had so many irons in the fire, except Jim Pinkerton.[31] I forgot to mention I have the most gallant suggestion from Lang, with an offer of MS. authorities, which turns my brain. It's all about the throne of Poland and buried treasure in the Mackay country, and Alan Breck can figure there in glory.

Yesterday, J. and I set off to Blacklock's (American Consul) who lives not far from that little village I have so often mentioned as lying between us and Apia. I had some questions to ask him for my _History_; thence we must proceed to Vailele, where I had also to cross-examine the plantation manager about the battle there. We went by a track I had never before followed down the hill to Vaisigano, which flows here in a deep valley, and was unusually full, so that the horses trembled in the ford. The whole bottom of the valley is full of various streams posting between strips of forest with a brave sound of waters. In one place we had a glimpse of a fall some way higher up, and then sparkling in sunlight in the midst of the green valley. Then up by a winding path scarce accessible to a horse for steepness, to the other side, and the open cocoanut glades of the plantation. Here we rode fast, did a mighty satisfactory afternoon's work at the plantation house, and still faster back. On the return Jack fell with me, but got up again; when I felt him recovering I gave him his head, and he shoved his foot through the rein; I got him by the bit however, and all was well; he had mud over all his face, but his knees were not broken. We were scarce home when the rain began again; that was luck. It is pouring now in torrents; we are in the height of the bad season. Lloyd leaves along with this letter on a change to San Francisco; he had much need of it, but I think this will brace him up. I am, as you see, a tower of strength. I can remember riding not so far and not near so fast when I first came to Samoa, and being shattered next day with fatigue; now I could not tell I have done anything; have re-handled my battle of Fangalii according to yesterday's information--four pages rewritten; and written already some half-dozen pages of letters.

I observe with disgust that while of yore, when I own I was guilty, you never spared me abuse--but now, when I am so virtuous, where is the praise? Do admit that I have become an excellent letter-writer--at least to you, and that your ingratitude is imbecile.--Yours ever,

R. L. S.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "In the missionary work which is being done among the Samoans,
Mr. Stevenson was especially interested. He was an observant,
shrewd, yet ever generous critic of all our religious and
educational organisations. His knowledge of native character and
life enabled him to understand missionary difficulties, while his
genial contact with all sorts and conditions of men made him keen to
detect deficiencies in men and methods, and apt in useful
suggestion." The above is the testimony of the Mr. Clarke here
mentioned (Rev. W. E. Clarke of the London Missionary Society). This
gentleman was from the first one of the most valued friends of Mr.
Stevenson and his family in Samoa, and, when the end came, read the
funeral service beside his grave on Mount Vaea.

[2] The lady in the _Vicar of Wakefield_ who declares herself "all
in a muck of sweat."

[3] First published in the New Review, January 1895.

[4] Afterwards changed into _The Beach of Falesa_.

[5] Mr. Lloyd Osbourne had come to England to pack and wind up affairs
at Skerryvore.

[6] The lines beginning "I heard the pulse of the besieging sea"; see
Vol. xxiv., p. 366.

[7] "The Monument" was his name for my house at the British Museum,
and George was my old faithful servant, George Went.

[8] The late Mr. John Lafarge, long an honoured _doyen_ among New
York artists, whose record of his holiday in the South Seas, in the
shape of a series of water-colour sketches of the scenery and people
(with a catalogue full of interesting notes and observations), was
one of the features of the Champ de Mars Salon in 1895.

[9] Mrs. B. W. Procter, the stepdaughter of Basil Montagu and widow
of Barry Cornwall. The death of this spirited veteran in 1888
snapped one of the last links with the days and memories of Keats
and Coleridge. A shrewd and not too indulgent judge of character,
she took R. L. S. into warm favour at first sight, and never spoke of
or inquired after him but with unwonted tenderness.

[10] On a projected expedition to Sydney.

[11] See _A Footnote to History_ for more in praise of Dr. Stuebel,
and of his exceptional deserts among white officials in Samoa.

[12] One of the many aliases of the wicked Skye-terrier of Hyeres,
Davos, and Bournemouth days, celebrated in the essay _On the
Character of Dogs_.

[13] _Battre les champs_, to wander in mind.

[14] _Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin_, by R. L. S., prefixed to _Papers
Literary, Scientific, etc., by the late Fleeming Jenkin, F.R.S.,
LL.D._; 2 vols. London, Longmans, 1887. The first chapters consist
of a genealogical history of the family. This, to my mind one of the
best works of R. L. S., has lately been separately reprinted, having
long been accessible only in the Edinburgh and Pentland editions. Of
_Delafleld_ I never heard; the plan of _Shovel_, which was to be in
great part a story of the Peninsular War, had been sketched out and
a few chapters written as long ago as the seventies.

[15] _The Misadventures of John Nicholson._

[16] The South Sea Letters.

[17] The price advanced for these Letters was among the considerations
which originally induced the writer to set out on his Pacific voyage.

[18] The first serial tale, says Mr. Clarke, ever read by Samoans in
their own language was the story of the _Bottle Imp_, "which found
its way into print at Samoa, and was read with wonder and delight in
many a thatched Samoan hut before it won the admiration of readers
at home." In the English form the story was published first in Black
and White, and afterwards in the volume called _Island Nights'
Entertainments_.

[19] Boating expedition: pronounce _malanga_.

[20] Portraits of myself for which he had asked.

[21] Miss Fanny Macpherson, now Lady Holroyd.

[22] In reply to a suggestion which ultimately took effect in the
shape of the volume called _Across the Plains_ (Chatto & Windus,
1892).

[23] The steam-yacht of the Commissioners of Northern Lights, on
which he had been accustomed as a lad to accompany his father on the
official trips of inspection round the coast.

[24] Mr. Rudyard Kipling was at this time planning a trip to Samoa,
but the plan was unfortunately not carried out, and he and Stevenson
never met.

[25] Readers of _The Wrecker_ will not need to be reminded that this
is the name of the personage on whom the mystery in that story
hinges.

[26] See vol. xxiii. pp. 46, 48.

[27] _Across the Plains._ The papers specially referred to in the
next lines are those written at Saranac Lake in the winter of
1887-88, including _A Letter to a Young Gentleman_, _Pulvis et
Umbra_, _A Christmas Sermon_.

[28] For the volume _Across the Plains_.

[29] _i.e._ on the stage.

[30] As to this peculiar intermittency of the Samoan streams, full
in their upper course, but below in many places dry or lost, compare
the late Lord Pembroke's _South Sea Bubbles_, p. 212:--"One odd
thing connected with these ravines is the fact that the higher you
go the more water you find. Unlike the Thames, which begins, I
believe, in half a mile of dusty lane, and expands in its brimming
breadth as it approaches the sea, a Samoan stream begins in bubbling
plenty and ends in utter drought a mile or two from the salt water.
Gradually as you ascend you become more and more hopeful; moist
patches of sand appear here and there, then tiny pools that a fallen
leaf might cover, then larger ones with little thread-like runs of
water between them; larger and larger, till at last you reach some
hard ledge of trap, over which a glorious stream gurgles and
splashes into a pool ample enough for the bath of an elephant."

[31] In _The Wrecker_. As to the story thus suggested by Mr. Andrew
Lang, see below, pp. 171, 187, etc.

XII

LIFE IN SAMOA--_Continued_

SECOND YEAR AT VAILIMA

JANUARY-DECEMBER 1892

The New Year found Stevenson down with his first attack of the influenza epidemic, then virulent all over the world. But the illness was not sufficient to stop his work, and in the first two months of the year he was busy continuing his conscientious labours on _The Footnote to History_, seeing _The Wrecker_ and _The Beach of Falesa_ through the press, planning the South Sea plantation novel _Sophia Scarlet_, which never got beyond that inchoate stage, and writing the continuation to _Kidnapped_, first intended to bear the name of the hero, David Balfour, and afterwards changed to _Catriona_. With this he proceeded swimmingly, completing it between February and September, in a shorter time than any other of his sustained narratives; and on publication its success was great. By May he had finished the _Footnote_, and then had a dash at the first chapters of _The Young Chevalier_, which stand in their truncated state a piece of work as vivid and telling as he had ever done. Early in the autumn he struck a still fuller note in the draft of the first chapters of _Weir of Hermiston_.

During this year the household at Vailima received a new temporary inmate in the person of Mr. Graham Balfour, a cousin whom Stevenson had not previously known, but with whom he soon formed the closest and most confidential friendship of his later life. In the summer and early autumn he was much taken up both with politics and with hospitalities. As hereinafter narrated, he made, and was thwarted in, a serious attempt to effect a reconciliation between the two rival chiefs; and continued his series of letters to the Times showing up the incompetence, and worse, of the responsible Treaty officials. In August he took lively pleasure in a visit paid to the islands by Lady Jersey and some members of her family from Australia. During the course of their stay he conducted the visitors to the rebel camp under aliases, as the needs of the time required, and in a manner that seemed like the realisation of a chapter of a Waverley novel. A month or two later he became aware, with more amusement than alarm, of measures for his deportation set on foot but not carried through by the Treaty officials. For a man of his temper, the political muddle and mismanagement of which the Samoan Islands were the scene--and not only these, however much he might lament them for the sake of the inhabitants, but even the risks he ran of serious personal consequences from his own action,--added to life at least as much of zest and excitement as of annoyance.

In October he determined, not without serious financial misgivings and chiefly in deference to his mother's urgency, to enlarge his house at Vailima by putting up a new block adjoining and communicating with that which he had hitherto inhabited. The work was promptly and efficiently carried out by the German Firm and completed by the end of the year. Quite towards the close of December, copies of _The Footnote to History_ reached Samoa, and the book, so far from being a cause of offence to his friends the managers of that firm, as both he and they had feared, was found acceptable and devoid of offence by them: a result celebrated in the convivial manner described in the last letter of this section. On the whole the year had been a prosperous one, full of successful work and eager interests, although darkened in its later months by disquietude on account of his wife's health. He had himself well maintained the improved strength and the renewed capacity both for literary work and outdoor activity which life in the South Seas had brought him from the first.

TO E. L. BURLINGAME

_[Vailima] Jan, 2nd, '92._

MY DEAR BURLINGAME,--Overjoyed you were pleased with _The Wrecker_, and shall consider your protests. There is perhaps more art than you think for in the peccant chapter, where I have succeeded in packing into one a dedication, an explanation, and a termination. Surely you had not recognised the phrase about boodle? It was a quotation from Jim Pinkerton, and seemed to me agreeably skittish. However, all shall be prayerfully considered.

To come to a more painful subject. Herewith go three more chapters of the wretched History; as you see, I approach the climax. I expect the book to be some 70,000 words, of which you have now 45. Can I finish it for next mail? I am going to try! 'Tis a long piece of journalism, and full of difficulties here and there, of this kind and that, and will make me a power of friends to be sure. There is one Becker who will probably put up a window to me in the church where he was baptized; and I expect a testimonial from Captain Hand.

Sorry to let the mail go without the Scott; this has been a bad month with me, and I have been below myself. I shall find a way to have it come by next, or know the reason why. The mail after, anyway.

A bit of a sketch map appears to me necessary for my History; perhaps two. If I do not have any, 'tis impossible any one should follow; and I, even when not at all interested, demand that I shall be able to follow; even a tourist book without a map is a cross to me; and there must be others of my way of thinking. I inclose the very artless one that I think needful. Vailima, in case you are curious, is about as far again behind Tanugamanono as that is from the sea.

M'Clure is publishing a short story of mine, some 50,000 words, I think, _The Beach of Falesa_; when he's done with it, I want you and Cassell to bring it out in a little volume; I shall send you a dedication for it; I believe it good; indeed, to be honest, very good. Good gear that pleases the merchant.

The other map that I half threaten is a chart for the hurricane. Get me Kimberley's report of the hurricane: not to be found here. It is of most importance; I _must_ have it with my proofs of that part, if I cannot have it earlier, which now seems impossible.--Yours in hot haste,

R. L. STEVENSON.

TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE

At the news that his correspondent was occupied teaching and
entertaining a class of children in a Kilburn basement, Stevenson
bethinks himself of helping her by writing an account of Samoa and
Samoan life for children.

_Vailima, January 4th, 1892._

MY DEAR ADELAIDE,--We were much pleased with your letter and the news of your employment. Admirable, your method. But will you not run dry of fairy stories? Please salute your pupils, and tell them that a long, lean, elderly man who lives right through on the under side of the world, so that down in your cellar you are nearer him than the people in the street, desires his compliments. This man lives in an island which is not very long, and extremely narrow. The sea beats round it very hard, so that it is difficult to get to shore. There is only one harbour where ships come, even that is very wild and dangerous; four ships of war were broken there a little while ago, and one of them is still lying on its side on a rock clean above water, where the sea threw it as you might throw your fiddle bow on the table. All round the harbour the town is strung out, it is nothing but wooden houses, only there are some churches built of stone, not very large, but the people have never seen such fine buildings. Almost all the houses are of one story. Away at one end lives the king of the whole country. His palace has a thatched roof which stands upon posts; it has no walls, but when it blows and rains, they have Venetian blinds which they let down between the posts and make it very snug. There is no furniture, and the king and queen and the courtiers sit and eat on the floor, which is of gravel: the lamp stands there too, and every now and then it is upset. These good folks wear nothing but a kilt about their waists, unless to go to church or for a dance, or the New Year, or some great occasion. The children play marbles all along the street; and though they are generally very jolly, yet they get awfully cross over their marbles, and cry and fight like boys and girls at home. Another amusement in country places is to shoot fish with a bow and arrow. All round the beach there is bright shallow water where fishes can be seen darting or lying in shoals. The child trots round the shore, and wherever he sees a fish, lets fly an arrow and misses, and then wades in after his arrow. It is great fun (I have tried it) for the child, and I never heard of it doing any harm to the fishes: so what could be more jolly? The road up to this lean man's house is uphill all the way and through forests; the forests are of great trees, not so much unlike the trees at home, only here and there are some very queer ones mixed with them, cocoa-nut palms, and great forest trees that are covered with blossom like red hawthorn, but not near so bright; and from all the trees thick creepers hang down like ropes, and nasty-looking weeds that they call orchids grow in the forks of the branches; and on the ground many prickly things are dotted which they call pine-apples: I suppose every one has eaten pineapple drops.

On the way up to the lean man's house you pass a little village, all of houses like the king's house, so that as you ride through you can see everybody sitting at dinner, or if it be night, lying in their beds by lamplight; for all these people are terribly afraid of ghosts, and would not lie in the dark for any favour. After the village, there is only one more house, and that is the lean man's. For the people are not very many, and live all by the sea, and the whole inside of the island is desert woods and mountains. When the lean man goes into this forest, he is very much ashamed to say it, but he is always in a terrible fright. The wood is so great and empty and hot, and it is always filled with curious noises; birds cry like children and bark like dogs, and he can hear people laughing and felling trees; and the other day (when he was far in the woods) he heard a great sound like the biggest mill-wheel possible going with a kind of dot-and-carry-one movement like a dance. That was the noise of an earthquake away down below him in the bowels of the earth, and that is the same thing as to say away up towards you in your cellar in Kilburn. All these noises make him feel lonely and scared, and he doesn't quite know what he is scared of. Once when he was just about to cross a river, a blow struck him on the top of his head and knocked him head-foremost down the bank and splash into the water. It was a nut, I fancy, that had fallen from a tree, by which accidents people are sometimes killed. But at the time he thought it was a black boy.

Aha, say you, and what is a black boy? Well, there are here a lot of poor people who are brought here from distant islands to labour as slaves for the Germans. They are not at all like the king or his people, who are brown and very pretty; but these are black as negroes and as ugly as sin, poor souls, and in their own lands they live all the time at war and cook and eat men's flesh. The Germans thrash them with whips to make them work, and every now and then some run away into the Bush, as the forest is called, and build little sheds of leaves, and eat nuts and roots and fruit, and dwell there by themselves in the great desert. Sometimes they are bad and wild and come down in the villages and steal and kill; and people whisper to each other that some of them have gone back to their horrid old habits, and catch men and women in order to eat them. But it is very likely not true; and the most of them are only poor, stupid, trembling, half-starved, pitiful creatures like frightened dogs. Their life is all very well when the sun shines, as it does eight or nine months in the year. But it is very different the rest of the time. The wind rages here most violently. The great trees thrash about like whips; the air is filled with leaves and great branches flying about like birds; and the sound of the trees falling shakes the earth. It rains too as it never rains at home. You can hear a shower while it is yet half a mile away, hissing like a shower-bath in the forest; and when it comes to you, the water blinds your eyes, and the cold drenching takes your breath away as though some one had struck you. In that kind of weather it must be dreadful indeed to live in the woods, one man alone by himself. And you must know that, if the lean man feels afraid to be in the forest, the people of the island and the black boys are much more afraid than he. For they believe the woods to be quite filled with spirits; some are like pigs, and some are like flying things; but others (and these are thought the most dangerous) come in the shape of beautiful young women and young men, beautifully dressed in the island manner, with fine kilts and fine necklaces and crowns of scarlet seeds and flowers. Woe betide he or she who gets to speak with one of these! They will be charmed out of their wits, and come home again quite silly, and go mad and die. So that the poor black boy must be always trembling and looking about for the coming of the women-devils.

Sometimes the women-devils go down out of the woods into the villages, and here is a tale the lean man heard last year. One of the islanders was sitting in his house, and he had cooked fish. There came along the road two beautiful young women, dressed as I told you, who came into his house and asked for some of his fish. It is the fashion in the islands always to give what is asked, and never to ask folk's names. So the man gave them fish and talked to them in the island jesting way. And presently he asked one of the women for her red necklace, which is good manners and their way; he had given the fish, and he had a right to ask for something back. "I will give it you by and by," said the woman, and she and her companion went away; but he thought they were gone very suddenly, and the truth is they had vanished. The night was nearly come, when the man heard the voice of the woman crying that he should come to her and she would give the necklace. And he looked out, and behold she was standing calling him from the top of the sea, on which she stood as you might on the table. At that, fear came on the man; he fell on his knees and prayed, and the woman disappeared. It was known afterwards that this was once a woman indeed, but should have died a thousand years ago, and has lived all that while as a devil in the woods beside the spring of a river. Saumai-afe (Sow-my-affy) is her name, in case you want to write to her.--Ever your friend Tusitala (tale-writer),

_alias_ ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

The South Sea novel here mentioned, _Sophia Scarlet_, never got
beyond the rough draft of an opening chapter or two.

_[Vailima] Jan. 31st, '92._

MY DEAR COLVIN,--No letter at all from you, and this scratch from me! Here is a year that opens ill. Lloyd is off to "the coast" sick--_the coast_ means California over most of the Pacific--I have been down all month with influenza, and am just recovering--I am overlaid with proofs, which I am just about half fit to attend to. One of my horses died this morning, and another is now dying on the front lawn--Lloyd's horse and Fanny's. Such is my quarrel with destiny. But I am mending famously, come and go on the balcony, have perfectly good nights, and though I still cough, have no oppression and no hemorrhage and no fever. So if I can find time and courage to add no more, you will know my news is not altogether of the worst; a year or two ago, and what a state I should have been in now! Your silence, I own, rather alarms me. But I tell myself you have just miscarried; had you been too ill to write, some one would have written me. Understand, I send this brief scratch not because I am unfit to write more, but because I have 58 galleys of _The Wrecker_ and 102 of _The Beach of Falesa_ to get overhauled somehow or other in time for the mail, and for three weeks I have not touched a pen with my finger.

_Feb. 1st._--The second horse is still alive, but I still think dying. The first was buried this morning. My proofs are done; it was a rough two days of it, but done. _Consummatum est; ua uma_. I believe _The Wrecker_ ends well; if I know what a good yarn is, the last four chapters make a good yarn--but pretty horrible. _The Beach of Falesa_ I still think well of, but it seems it's immoral and there's a to-do, and financially it may prove a heavy disappointment. The plaintive request sent to me, to make the young folks married properly before "that night," I refused; you will see what would be left of the yarn, had I consented.[32] This is a poison bad world for the romancer, this Anglo-Saxon world; I usually get out of it by not having any women in it at all; but when I remember I had _The Treasure of Franchard_ refused as unfit for a family magazine, I feel despair weigh upon my wrists.

As I know you are always interested in novels, I must tell you that a new one is now entirely planned. It is to be called _Sophia Scarlet_, and is in two parts. Part I. The Vanilla Planter. Part II. The Overseers. No chapters, I think; just two dense blocks of narrative, the first of which is purely sentimental, but the second has some rows and quarrels, and winds up with an explosion, if you please! I am just burning to get at _Sophia_, but I _must_ do this Samoan journalism--that's a cursed duty. The first part of _Sophia_, bar the first twenty or thirty pages, writes itself; the second is more difficult, involving a good many characters--about ten, I think--who have to be kept all moving, and give the effect of a society. I have three women to handle, out and well-away! but only Sophia is in full tone. Sophia and two men, Windermere, the Vanilla Planter, who dies at the end of Part I., and Rainsforth, who only appears in the beginning of