nner, five; cards in the evening till eight; and
then to bed--only I have no bed, only a chest with a mat and
blankets--and read myself to sleep. This is the routine, but often sadly
interrupted. Then you may see me sitting on the floor of my verandah
haranguing and being harangued by squatting chiefs on a question of a
road; or more privately holding an inquiry into some dispute among our
familiars, myself on my bed, the boys on the floor--for when it comes to
the judicial I play dignity--or else going down to Apia on some more or
less unsatisfactory errand. Altogether it is a life that suits me, but
it absorbs me like an ocean. That is what I have always envied and
admired in Scott; with all that immensity of work and study, his mind
kept flexible, glancing to all points of natural interest. But the lean
hot spirits, such as mine, become hypnotised with their bit
occupations--if I may use Scotch to you--it is so far more scornful than
any English idiom. Well, I can't help being a skeleton, and you are to
take this devious passage for an apology.

I thought _Aladdin_[37] capital fun; but why, in fortune, did he pretend
it was moral at the end? The so-called nineteenth century, _ou va-t-il
se nicher?_ 'Tis a trifle, but Pyle would do well to knock the passage
out, and leave his boguey tale a boguey tale, and a good one at that.

The arrival of your box was altogether a great success to the castaways.
You have no idea where we live. Do you know, in all these islands there
are not five hundred whites, and no postal delivery, and only one
village--it is no more--and would be a mean enough village in Europe? We
were asked the other day if Vailima were the name of our post town, and
we laughed. Do you know, though we are but three miles from the village
metropolis, we have no road to it, and our goods are brought on the
pack-saddle? And do you know--or I should rather say, can you
believe--or (in the famous old Tichborne trial phrase) would you be
surprised to learn, that all you have read of Vailima--or Subpriorsford,
as I call it--is entirely false, and we have no ice-machine, and no
electric light, and no water supply but the cistern of the heavens, and
but one public room, and scarce a bedroom apiece? But, of course, it is
well known that I have made enormous sums by my evanescent literature,
and you will smile at my false humility. The point, however, is much on
our minds just now. We are expecting an invasion of Kiplin