of them sang a song with a melodramatic story
running through it about a poor fellow going to a house and sitting on
the door-step wan and weary, and seeing on the doorplate the name of
Jasper. Soon Jasper comes out, and though the poverty-stricken one
pleads for a bit of bread he's told to go to the workhouse. 'I pays my
taxes,' says the heartless Jasper, 'and to the workhouse you must go.'
'And who would have thought it,' goes the chorus, 'for we were
schoolmytes, schoolmytes!'"

A devastating epidemic of measles, much aggravated by the improper
treatment given to patients by the natives, now broke out. Even
Vailima did not escape its ravages, and Mrs. Strong writes of it on
October 8:

"Everybody is well of the measles by now and all are crawling out into
the sunshine. There have been a hundred and fifty deaths on this
island alone. Our Sosimo was taken ill down in the town. Tamaitai and
I went down to see him, and, finding him in a wretched state, had him
brought home in a native sling on a pole, the way they carry wounded
soldiers. None of our people died, for they willingly accepted our
rules for their care."

After the war was over, it was found that the stress and excitement of
it all had told on Mr. Stevenson's health, and in the early part of
September he went to Honolulu for a change. The trip was a
disappointment, for he was taken quite seriously ill there, and his
wife had to take steamer and go after him, arriving in a state of
great anxiety. Under her tender care he soon recovered and they
returned to Vailima.

In Samoa, Tusitala was not the only "teller of tales," for all sorts
of strange stories--some amusing, some scurrilous and malicious--were
invented about the family at Vailima and ran current in the gossip "on
the beach." One of the most fantastic of these inventions was that Mr.
Stevenson had been married before to a native woman, and that Mrs.
Strong[57] was his half-caste daughter by this marriage. The one
advantage about this peculiar story was the hilarious fun he was able
to get out of it. He made up all kinds of wonderful romances about the
supposititious first wife, who he said was a native of Morocco,
"black, but a damned fine woman." When Mrs. Stevenson scolded him for
not wearing his cloak in the rain he pretended to weep and said:
"Moroccy never spoke to me like that!" One evening Mrs. Strong heard
gay laughter in her mother's room, and, going in to see what it was
about, found h