nd._ Death to the optic nerve.

Admitted we live in an age of the optic nerve in literature. For how
many centuries did literature get along without a sign of it? However,
I'll consider your letter.

How exquisite is your character of the critic in _Essays in London_! I
doubt if you have done any single thing so satisfying as a piece of
style and of insight--Yours ever,

R. L. S.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

Recounting a scene of gratitude for bounty shown by him to the
prisoners in Apia gaol.

[_Vailima, December 1893._]

MY DEAR COLVIN,--One page out of my picture book I must give you. Fine
burning day; 1/2 past two P.M. We four begin to rouse up from reparatory
slumbers, yawn, and groan, get a cup of tea, and miserably dress: we
have had a party the day before, X'mas Day, with all the boys absent
but one, and latterly two; we had cooked all day long, a cold dinner,
and lo! at two our guests began to arrive, though dinner was not till
six; they were sixteen, and fifteen slept the night and breakfasted.
Conceive, then, how unwillingly we climb on our horses and start off in
the hottest part of the afternoon to ride 4 1/2 miles, attend a native
feast in the gaol, and ride four and a half miles back. But there is no
help for it. I am a sort of father of the political prisoners, and have
_charge d'ames_ in that riotously absurd establishment, Apia Gaol. The
twenty-three (I think it is) chiefs act as under gaolers. The other day
they told the Captain of an attempt to escape. One of the lesser
political prisoners the other day effected a swift capture, while the
Captain was trailing about with the warrant; the man came to see what
was wanted; came, too, flanked by the former gaoler; my prisoner offers
to show him the dark cell, shoves him in, and locks the door. "Why do
you do that?" cries the former gaoler. "A warrant," says he. Finally,
the chiefs actually feed the soldiery who watch them!

The gaol is a wretched little building, containing a little room, and
three cells, on each side of a central passage; it is surrounded by a
fence of corrugated iron, and shows, over the top of that, only a gable
end with the inscription _O le Fale Puipui_. It is on the edge of the
mangrove swamp, and is reached by a sort of causeway of turf. When we
drew near, we saw the gates standing open and a prodigious crowd
outside--I mean prodigious for Apia, perhaps a hundred and fifty people.
The two sentries at the gat