patched his work and started after. No cart! he
hurried on up the road--no cart. Transfer the scene to Vailima, where on
a sudden, to Fanny and me, the cart appears, apparently at a hard
gallop, some two hours before it was expected; Henry radiantly ruling
chaos from the bench. It stopped: it was long before we had time to
remark that the axle was twisted like the letter L. Our first care was
the horses. There they stood, black with sweat, the sweat raining from
them--literally raining--their heads down, their feet apart--and blood
running thick from the nostrils of the mare. We got out Fanny's
under-clothes--couldn't find anything else but our blankets--to rub them
down, and in about half an hour we had the blessed satisfaction to see
one after the other take a bite or two of grass. But it was a toucher;
a little more and these steeds would have been foundered.

_Monday, 31st(?) November._--Near a week elapsed, and no journal. On
Monday afternoon, Moors rode up and I rode down with him, dined, and
went over in the evening to the American consulate; present,
Consul-General Sewall, Lieut. Parker and Mrs. Parker, Lafarge the
American decorator, Adams an American historian; we talked late, and it
was arranged I was to write up for Fanny, and we should both dine on the
morrow.

On the Friday, I was all forenoon in the mission house, lunched at the
German consulate, went on board the _Sperber_(German war-ship) in the
afternoon, called on my lawyer on my way out to American Consulate, and
talked till dinner time with Adams, whom I am supplying with
introductions and information for Tahiti and the Marquesas. Fanny
arrived a wreck, and had to lie down. The moon rose, one day past full,
and we dined in the verandah, a good dinner on the whole; talk with
Lafarge about art and the lovely dreams of art students.[8] Remark by
Adams, which took me briskly home to the Monument--"I only liked one
_young_ woman--and that was Mrs. Procter."[9] Henry James would like
that. Back by moonlight in the consulate boat--Fanny being too tired to
walk--to Moors's. Saturday, I left Fanny to rest, and was off early to
the Mission, where the politics are thrilling just now. The native
pastors (to every one's surprise) have moved of themselves in the
matter of the native dances, desiring the restrictions to be removed, or
rather to be made dependent on the character of the dance. Clarke, who
had feared censure and all kinds of trouble, is, of course,