Above all this is true of the last, where my weak point was attempted. On every other, I am strong. Only force can dislodge me, for public opinion is wholly on my side. All races and degrees are united in heartfelt opposition to the Men of Mulinuu. The news of the fighting was of no concern to mortal man; it was made much of because men love talk of battles, and because the Government pray God daily for some scandal not their own; but it was only a brisk episode in a clan fight which has grown apparently endemic in the west of Tutuila. At the best it was a twopenny affair, and never occupied my mind five minutes.
I am so weary of reports that are without foundation and threats that go without fulfilment, and so much occupied besides by the raging troubles of my own wame, that I have been very slack on politics, as I have been in literature. With incredible labour, I have rewritten the First Chapter of the Justice Clerk; it took me about ten days, and requires another athletic dressing after all. And that is my story for the month. The rest is grunting and grutching.
Consideranda for THE BEACH:-
I. Whether to add one or both the tales I sent you? II. Whether to call the whole volume 'Island Nights Entertainments'? III Whether, having waited so long, it would not be better to give me another mail, in case I could add another member to the volume and a little better justify the name?
If I possibly can draw up another story, I will. What annoyed me about the use of THE BOTTLE IMP was that I had always meant it for the centre-piece of a volume of MARCHEN which I was slowly to elaborate. You always had an idea that I depreciated the B. I; I can't think wherefore; I always particularly liked it - one of my best works, and ill to equal; and that was why I loved to keep it in portfolio till I had time to grow up to some other fruit of the same VENUE. However, that is disposed of now, and we must just do the best we can.
I am not aware that there is anything to add; the weather is hellish, waterspouts, mists, chills, the foul fiend's own weather, following on a week of expurgated heaven; so it goes at this bewildering season. I write in the upper floor of my new house, of which I will send you some day a plan to measure. 'Tis an elegant structure, surely, and the proid of me oi. Was asked to pay for it just now, and genteelly refused, and then agreed, in view of general good-will, to pay a half of what is still due.
24TH JANUARY 1893.
This ought to have gone last mail and was forgotten. My best excuse is that I was engaged in starting an influenza, to which class of exploit our household has been since then entirely dedicated. We had eight cases, one of them very bad, and one - mine - complicated with my old friend Bluidy Jack. Luckily neither Fanny, Lloyd or Belle took the confounded thing, and they were able to run the household and nurse the sick to admiration.
Some of our boys behaved like real trumps. Perhaps the prettiest performance was that of our excellent Henry Simele, or, as we sometimes call him, Davy Balfour. Henry, I maun premeese, is a chief; the humblest Samoan recoils from emptying slops as you would from cheating at cards; now the last nights of our bad time when we had seven down together, it was enough to have made anybody laugh or cry to see Henry going the rounds with a slop-bucket and going inside the mosquito net of each of the sick, Protestant and Catholic alike, to pray with them.
I must tell you that in my sickness I had a huge alleviation and began a new story. This I am writing by dictation, and really think it is an art I can manage to acquire. The relief is beyond description; it is just like a school-treat to me and the amanuensis bears up extraordinar'. The story is to be called ST. IVES; I give you your choice whether or not it should bear the subtitle, 'Experiences of a French prisoner in England.' We were just getting on splendidly with it, when this cursed mail arrived and requires to be attended to.