king deep. I am desperately
hunted to finish my Samoa book before the mail goes; this last chapter
is equally delicate and necessary. The prayers of the congregation are
requested. Eheu! and it will be ended before this letter leaves and
printed in the States ere you can read this scribble. The first dinner
gong has sounded; _je vous salue, monsieur et cher confrere. Tofa,
soifua!_ Sleep! long life! as our Samoan salutation of farewell runs.

_Friday, May_ 13_th._--Well, the last chapter, by far the most difficult
and ungrateful, is well under way, I have been from six to seven hours
upon it daily since I last wrote; and that is all I have done forbye
working at Samoan rather hard, and going down on Wednesday evening to
the club. I make some progress now at the language; I am teaching Belle,
which clears and exercises myself. I am particularly taken with the
_finesse_ of the pronouns. The pronouns are all dual and plural, and the
first person, both in the dual and plural, has a special exclusive and
inclusive form. You can conceive what fine effects of precision and
distinction can be reached in certain cases. Take Ruth, i. _vv._ 8 to
13, and imagine how those pronouns come in; it is exquisitely elegant,
and makes the mouth of the _litterateur_ to water. I am going to
exercitate my pupil over those verses to-day for pronoun practice.

_Tuesday._--Yesterday came yours. Well, well, if the dears prefer a
week, why, I'll give them ten days, but the real document, from which I
have scarcely varied, ran for one night.[43] I think you seem scarcely
fair to Wiltshire, who had surely, under his beast-ignorant ways, right
noble qualities. And I think perhaps you scarce do justice to the fact
that this is a place of realism _a outrance_; nothing extenuated or
coloured. Looked at so, is it not, with all its tragic features,
wonderfully idyllic, with great beauty of scene and circumstance? And
will you please to observe that almost all that is ugly is in the
whites? I'll apologise for Papa Randal if you like; but if I told you
the whole truth--for I did extenuate there!--and he seemed to me
essential as a figure, and essential as a pawn in the game, Wiltshire's
disgust for him being one of the small, efficient motives in the story.
Now it would have taken a fairish dose to disgust Wiltshire.--Again, the
idea of publishing the _Beach_ substantively is dropped--at once, both
on account of expostulation, and because it measured shorter