y true, but that this condition has been brought
about by the unaided Word of God; that Word which so many now-a-days
would fain underrate, but which for those who are taught by the Holy
Spirit is still the power of God unto salvation.

The hilarity of the Pitcairners increased rather than diminished as
their love for the Bible deepened. Fun and solemnity are not
necessarily, and never need be, antagonistic. Hand in hand these two
have walked the earth together since Adam and Eve bid each other
good-morning in the peaceful groves of Paradise. They are subject, no
doubt, to the universal laws which make it impossible for two things to
fill the same place at the same time, and they sometimes do get, as it
were, out of step, and jostle each other slightly, which calls forth a
gentle shake of the head from the one and a deprecatory smile from the
other; but they seldom disagree, and never fight.

Thus it came to pass that though John Adams, as time went on, read more
than ever of the Bible to his audiences, and dilated much on the
parables, he did not dismiss Robinson Crusoe, or expel Gulliver, or put
a stop to blind-man's-buff. On the contrary, waxing courageous under
the influence of success, he cast off his moorings from the skeletons of
the stories to which he had at first timidly attached himself, and
crowding all sail alow and aloft, swept out into the unexplored seas of
pure, unadulterated, and outrageous fiction of his own invention.

"Them's the stories for me," Daniel McCoy was wont to say, when
commenting on this subject. "Truth is all very well in its way, you
know, but it's a great bother when you've got to stick to it; of course
I mean when story-tellin'."

Neither John Adams nor his pupils knew at that time, though doubtless
their descendants have learned long ere now, that after all truth is in
very deed stranger than fiction.

As time passed changes more or less momentous occurred in the lonely
island. True, none of those convulsions which rack and overturn the
larger communities of men on earth visited that favoured spot; but
forces of Nature were being slowly yet surely developed, which began to
tell with considerable effect on the people of Pitcairn.

They were not, however, much troubled by the ills that flesh is heir to.
Leading, as they did, natural and healthy lives, eating simple and to a
large extent vegetable fare, and knowing nothing of the abominations of
tobacco or strong drink, the