of a ventriloquist; and imitating as well as I could the sort of voice
they make, asked her if the bad spirit did not talk like that. Faauma
was very much surprised, and told me that was just his voice.

Well, that was a very good business for the evening. The people all went
away because the demon was gone away, and the circus was over, and Sina
was allowed to sleep. But the trouble came after. There had been an evil
spirit in that room and his name was Tu. No one could say when he might
come back again; they all voted it was Tu much; and now Talolo and Sina
have had to be lodged in the Soldier Room.[24] As for the little room by
the stable, there it stands empty; it is too small to play soldiers in,
and I do not see what we can do with it, except to have a nice brass
name-plate engraved in Sydney, or in "Frisco," and stuck upon the door
of it--_Mr. Tu._

So you see that ventriloquism has its bad side as well as its good
sides; and I don't know that I want any more ventriloquists on this
plantation. We shall have _Tu_ in the cook-house next, and then _Tu_ in
Lafaele's, and _Tu_ in the workman's cottage; and the end of it all will
be that we shall have to take the Tamaitai's room for the kitchen, and
my room for the boys' sleeping-house, and we shall all have to go out
and camp under umbrellas.

Well, where you are there may be schoolmasters, but there is no such
thing as Mr. _Tu_!

Now, it's all very well that these big people should be frightened out
of their wits by an old wife talking with her mouth shut; that is one of
the things we happen to know about. All the old women in the world might
talk with their mouths shut, and not frighten you or me, but there are
plenty of other things that frighten us badly. And if we only knew about
them, perhaps we should find them no more worthy to be feared than an
old woman talking with her mouth shut. And the names of some of these
things are Death, and Pain, and Sorrow.

UNCLE LOUIS.

X

TO AUSTIN STRONG

_Jan._ 27, 1893.

Dear General Hoskyns,--I have the honour to report as usual. Your giddy
mother having gone planting a flower-garden, I am obliged to write with
my own hand, and, of course, nobody will be able to read it. This has
been a very mean kind of a month. Aunt Maggie left with the influenza.
We have heard of her from Sydney, and she is all right again; but we
have inherited her influenza, and it made a poor place of Vailima. We
had Tal