potent. I was not
consulted--or only by one man, and that on particular points; I did not
choose to volunteer advice till some pressing occasion; I have not even
a vote, for I am not a member of the municipality.

What ails you, miserable man, to talk of saving material? I have a whole
world in my head, a whole new society to work, but I am in no hurry; you
will shortly make the acquaintance of the Island of Ulufanua, on which
I mean to lay several stories; the _Bloody Wedding_, possibly the _High
Woods_--(O, it's so good, the _High Woods_, but the story is craziness;
that's the trouble)--a political story, the _Labour Slave_, etc.
Ulufanua is an imaginary island; the name is a beautiful Samoan word for
the _top_ of a forest; ulu=leaves or hair, fanua=land. The ground or
country of the leaves. "Ulufanua the isle of the sea," read that verse
dactylically and you get the beat; the u's are like our double oo; did
ever you hear a prettier word?

I do not feel inclined to make a volume of Essays,[22] but if I did, and
perhaps the idea is good--and any idea is better than the _South
Seas_--here would be my choice of the Scribner articles: _Dreams_,
_Beggars_, _Lantern-Bearers_, _Random Memories_. There was a paper
called the _Old Pacific Capital_ in Fraser, in Tulloch's time, which had
merit; there were two on Fontainebleau in the Magazine of Art in
Henley's time. I have no idea if they're any good; then there's the
_Emigrant Train_. _Pulvis et Umbra_ is in a different key, and wouldn't
hang on with the rest.

I have just interrupted my letter and read through the chapter of the
_High Woods_ that is written, a chapter and a bit, some sixteen pages,
really very fetching, but what do you wish? the story is so wilful, so
steep, so silly--it's a hallucination I have outlived, and yet I never
did a better piece of work, horrid, and pleasing, and extraordinarily
_true_; it's sixteen pages of the South Seas; their essence. What am I
to do? Lose this little gem--for I'll be bold, and that's what I think
it--or go on with the rest, which I don't believe in, and don't like,
and which can never make aught but a silly yarn? Make another end to it?
Ah, yes, but that's not the way I write; the whole tale is implied; I
never use an effect, when I can help it, unless it prepares the effects
that are to follow; that's what a story consists in. To make another
end, that is to make the beginning all wrong. The denouement of a long
story is n