._--All yesterday writing my mail by the hand of Belle, to save
my wrist. This is a great invention, to which I shall stick, if it can
be managed. We had some alarm about Paatalise, but he slept well all
night for a benediction. This lunatic asylum exercise has no attractions
for any of us.

I don't know if I remembered to say how much pleased I was with _Across
the Plains_ in every way, inside and out, and you and me. The critics
seem to taste it, too, as well as could be hoped, and I believe it will
continue to bring me in a few shillings a year for a while. But such
books pay only indirectly.

To understand the full horror of the mad scene, and how well my boys
behaved, remember that they _believed P.'s ravings_, they _knew_ that
his dead family, thirty strong, crowded the front verandah and called on
him to come to the other world. They _knew_ that his dead brother had
met him that afternoon in the bush and struck him on both temples. And
remember! we are fighting the dead, and they had to go out again in the
black night, which is the dead man's empire. Yet last evening, when I
thought P. was going to repeat the performance, I sent down for Lafaele,
who had leave of absence, and he and his wife came up about eight
o'clock with a lighted brand. These are the things for which I have to
forgive my old cattle-man his manifold shortcomings; they are heroic--so
are the shortcomings, to be sure.

It came over me the other day suddenly that this diary of mine to you
would make good pickings after I am dead, and a man could make some kind
of a book out of it without much trouble. So, for God's sake, don't lose
them, and they will prove a piece of provision for my "poor old family,"
as Simele calls it.

About my coming to Europe, I get more and more doubtful, and rather
incline to Ceylon again as place of meeting. I am so absurdly well here
in the tropics, that it seems like affectation. Yet remember I have
never once stood Sydney. Anyway, I shall have the money for it all
ahead, before I think of such a thing.

We had a bowl of punch on your birthday, which my incredible mother
somehow knew and remembered.

By the time you receive this, my Samoan book will I suppose be out and
the worst known. If I am burned in effigy for it no more need be said;
if on the other hand I get off cheap with the authorities, this is to
say that, supposing a vacancy to occur, I would condescend to accept the
office of H.B.M.'s consul with