hese labours there were a thousand other troubles
to be met and conquered--servants' quarrels in the kitchen, for
Samoans are not a whit different in such respects from domestics all
the world over, jealousy between the house boys and the out boys,
constant alarms about devils and bewitchments, and, above all,
sickness of all sorts to be sympathized with and cured. For help in
all these derangements every one went to the mistress, for all had a
simple faith in her ability to relieve them of all their sorrows. At
one time she and her daughter nursed twenty-two men through the
measles--a very serious disease among the islanders. At another time
the large hall at Vailima was entirely filled with the beds of
influenza patients, Mr. Stevenson being isolated upstairs. In the
performance of the plantation work accidents sometimes happened to the
men, and she was often called upon to bind up dreadful wounds that
would have made many women faint. From her earliest youth she had
always been the kind of person to whom every one instinctively turns
in an emergency. When Mr. Stevenson was ill she understood what he
wanted by the merest gesture, and was always calm, reassuring, and
self-reliant, never breaking down until after the crisis was past. She
was a most delightful nurse otherwise, too, for when her children were
sick in bed she entertained them with cheerful stories to divert their
minds, and when they were convalescent made tempting dishes for them
to eat. One of my own dear memories is of a time when, as a little
child, I lay dangerously and painfully ill, unable to move even a
hand, and she lightened my sufferings immeasurably by buying a Noah's
ark and arranging the animals on a little table by my bedside where
I could look at them. When her husband was having one of his
speechless illnesses at Vailima she allowed only one at a time to go
in to him, under orders to be entertaining and to recount amusing
little adventures of the household. She herself was an adept at this,
though when she came out she left her smile at the bedroom door. For
his amusement she would sit by his bedside and play her famous game of
solitaire, learned so long ago from Prince Kropotkin, the Russian
revolutionist. He would make signs when she went wrong and point at
cards for her to take up. Sometimes she read trashy novels to him, for
they both liked such reading when it was bad enough to be funny.

With the childlike Samoans she found sympathy