l do the same, and you will pay several
times for the same land. In the Paumotus, where the missionaries are
like a swarm of gnats, this deception is threefold as bad."

"But the Tahitians are at least generous," I broke in.

Stroganoff combed his whiskers with a twig of the flamboyant tree
under which we sat. He glared at me.

"Generous! If you have money they will overwhelm you with presents,
looking for a double return; but if you are poor, they will treat
you as dirt under their feet. I know, for I am poor, and I live among
them. They are like those mina birds here, which will steal the button
off your coat if you do not guard it."

"Does not Christianity improve them?"

"No. The combats between Protestants, Catholics, and Mormons ended all
hope of that. They are never sincere except when they become fanatics,
and even then they never lose their native superstitions. Beliefs in
the ghosts of Tahiti, the tupapau, ihoiho, and varua ino, are common
to all of them."

"My dear Mr. Stroganoff," I expostulated, "your czars believed
in icons. My grandmother believed in werewolves and banshees, and
we burned blessed candles and sprinkled holy water in our houses
on All Souls' night to keep away demons. I have seen a clergyman,
educated in Paris and Louvain, exorcising devils with bell, book,
and candle in Maryland, in one of the oldest and proudest cities of
the United States. I have seen the American Governor-General of the
Philippines carrying a candle in a procession in honor of a mannikin
from a shrine at Antipolo, near Manila. Why, I could tell you--"

"Please, please, let me talk," Ivan Stroganoff interrupted. "What I
say is true, nevertheless. The Tahitian has not one good quality. He
is not to be compared with the American negro for any desirable trait."

"Do you know the negro?" I asked.

The old man grunted. He relit his cigar, now only an inch long,
and said:

"I was on the Merrimac when she fought the Monitor in two
engagements. I was a sailor on other Confederate men-of-war. I was
one of Colonel Mosby's guerillas, and was wounded with them. I have
lived thirteen years in the United States. I know the coon well. I
fought to keep him a slave."

"You are not an American?"

"I am a Russian, an anarchist once, and now I am for Root and Lodge,
the stand-pats. I lived in Russia in its darkest days, under several
czars, when your life was the forfeit of a wink. I was a lawyer there,
a politician, an intr