ng again the day after, so I need say no more
about health. Honolulu does not agree with me at all: I am always out of
sorts there, with slight headache, blood to the head, etc. I had a good
deal of work to do and did it with miserable difficulty; and yet all the
time I have been gaining strength, as you see, which is highly
encouraging. By the time I am done with this cruise I shall have the
material for a very singular book of travels: names of strange stories
and characters, cannibals, pirates, ancient legends, old Polynesian
poetry,--never was so generous a farrago. I am going down now to get the
story of a shipwrecked family, who were fifteen months on an island with
a murderer: there is a specimen. The Pacific is a strange place; the
nineteenth century only exists there in spots: all round, it is a no
man's land of the ages, a stir-about of epochs and races, barbarisms and
civilisations, virtues and crimes.

It is good of you to let me stay longer, but if I had known how ill you
were, I should be now on my way home. I had chartered my schooner and
made all arrangements before (at last) we got definite news. I feel
highly guilty; I should be back to insult and worry you a little. Our
address till further notice is to be c/o R. Towns & Co., Sydney. That is
final: I only got the arrangement made yesterday; but you may now
publish it abroad.--Yours ever,

R. L. S.

TO JAMES PAYN

The following was written to his old friend of Cornhill Magazine
days, Mr. James Payn, on receiving in Hawaii news of that gentleman's
ill health and gathering deafness.

_Honolulu, H.I., June 13th, 1889._

MY DEAR JAMES PAYN,--I get sad news of you here at my offsetting for
further voyages: I wish I could say what I feel. Sure there was never
any man less deserved this calamity; for I have heard you speak time and
again, and I remember nothing that was unkind, nothing that was untrue,
nothing that was not helpful, from your lips. It is the ill-talkers that
should hear no more. God knows, I know no word of consolation; but I do
feel your trouble. You are the more open to letters now; let me talk to
you for two pages. I have nothing but happiness to tell; and you may
bless God you are a man so sound-hearted that (even in the freshness of
your calamity) I can come to you with my own good fortune unashamed and
secure of sympathy. It is a good thing to be a good man, whether deaf or
whether dumb; and of all our f