ncertainty as
to when and where letters would reach him, had kept me from writing
during the previous autumn and winter.

_Honolulu, March 1889._

MY DEAR COLVIN,--Still not a word from you! I am utterly cast down; but
I will try to return good for evil and for once give you news. We are
here in the suburb of Honolulu in a rambling house or set of houses in a
great garden.

[Illustration: _a a a_, stairs up to balcony.]

1. Lloyd's room. 2. My mother's room. 3. A room kept dark for
photographs. 4. The kitchen. 5. Balcony. 6. The Lanai, an open room or
summer parlour, partly surrounded with Venetian shutters, in part quite
open, which is the living-room. 7. A crazy dirty cottage used for the
arts. 8. Another crazy dirty cottage, where Fanny and I live. The town
is some three miles away, but the house is connected by telephone with
the chief shops, and the tramway runs to within a quarter of a mile of
us. I find Honolulu a beastly climate after Tahiti and have been in bed
a little; but my colds _took on no catarrhal symptom_, which is
staggeringly delightful. I am studying Hawaiian with a native, a Mr.
Joseph Poepoe, a clever fellow too: the tongue is a little bewildering;
I am reading a pretty story in native--no, really it is pretty, although
wandering and wordy; highly pretty with its continual traffic from one
isle to another of the soothsayer, pursuing rainbows. Fanny is, I think,
a good deal better on the whole, having profited like me by the tropics;
my mother and Lloyd are first-rate. I do not think I have heard from you
since last May; certainly not since June; and this really frightens me.
Do write, even now. Scribner's Sons it should be; we shall probably be
out of this some time in April, home some time in June. But the world
whirls to me perceptibly, a mass of times and seasons and places and
engagements, and seas to cross, and continents to traverse, so that I
scarce know where I am. Well, I have had a brave time. _Et ego in
Arcadia_--though I don't believe Arcadia was a spot upon Tahiti. I have
written another long narrative poem: the _Song of Rahero_. Privately, I
think it good: but your ominous silence over the _Feast of Famine_ leads
me to fear we shall not be agreed. Is it possible I have wounded you in
some way? I scarce like to dream that it is possible; and yet I know too
well it may be so. If so, don't write, and you can pitch into me when we
meet. I am, admittedly, as mild as London