ious work at first, and we worked
strenuously, both of us. Every day I was up at dawn,
clearing, planting, working on my house, and at night when I
threw myself on my bed it was to sleep like a log till
morning. My wife worked as hard as I did. Then children were
born to us, first a son and then a daughter. My wife and I
have taught them all they know. We had a piano sent out from
France, and she has taught them to play and to speak English,
and I have taught them Latin and mathematics, and we read
history together. They can sail a boat. They can swim as
well as the natives. There is nothing about the land of which
they are ignorant. Our trees have prospered, and there is
shell on my reef. I have come to Tahiti now to buy a
schooner. I can get enough shell to make it worth while to
fish for it, and, who knows? I may find pearls. I have made
something where there was nothing. I too have made beauty.
Ah, you do not know what it is to look at those tall, healthy
trees and think that every one I planted myself."

"Let me ask you the question that you asked Strickland.
Do you never regret France and your old home in Brittany?"

"Some day, when my daughter is married and my son has a wife
and is able to take my place on the island, we shall go back
and finish our days in the old house in which I was born."

"You will look back on a happy life," I said.

"<i Evidemment>, it is not exciting on my island, and we are
very far from the world -- imagine, it takes me four days to
come to Tahiti -- but we are happy there. It is given to few
men to attempt a work and to achieve it. Our life is simple
and innocent. We are untouched by ambition, and what pride we
have is due only to our contemplation of the work of our
hands. Malice cannot touch us, nor envy attack. Ah, <i mon
cher monsieur>, they talk of the blessedness of labour, and it
is a meaningless phrase, but to me it has the most intense
significance. I am a happy man."

"I am sure you deserve to be," I smiled.

"I wish I could think so. I do not know how I have deserved
to have a wife who was the perfect friend and helpmate,
the perfect mistress and the perfect mother."

I reflected for a while on the life that the Captain suggested
to my imagination.

"It is obvious that to lead such an existence and make so
great a success of it, you must both have needed a strong will
and a determined character."

"Perhaps; but without one other factor we