ction of these infidel
prophesies rings in my ears like an invitation to the sea. _Tu l'as
voulu!_

I know you want some of our news, and it is all so far away that I know
not when to begin. We have a big house and we are building another--pray
God that we can pay for it. I am just reminded that we have no less than
eight several places of habitation in this place, which was a piece of
uncleared forest some three years ago. I think there are on my pay rolls
at the present moment thirteen human souls, not counting two washerwomen
who come and go. In addition to this I am at daggers drawn with the
Government, have had my correspondence stopped and opened by the Chief
Justice--it was correspondence with the so-called Rebel King,--and have
had boys examined and threatened with deportation to betray the secrets
of my relations with the same person. In addition to this I might direct
attention to those trifling exercises of the fancy, my literary works,
and I hope you won't think that I am likely to suffer from ennui. Nor is
Fanny any less active. Ill or well, rain or shine, a little blue
indefatigable figure is to be observed howking about certain patches of
garden. She comes in heated and bemired up to the eyebrows, late for
every meal. She has reached a sort of tragic placidity. Whenever she
plants anything new the boys weed it up. Whenever she tries to keep
anything for seed the house-boys throw it away. And she has reached that
pitch of a kind of noble dejection that she would almost say she did not
mind. Anyway, her cabbages have succeeded. Talolo (our native cook, and
a very good one too) likened them the other day to the head of a German;
and even this hyperbolical image was grudging. I remember all the
trouble you had with servants at the Roost. The most of them were
nothing to the trances that we have to go through here at times, when I
have to hold a bed of justice, and take evidence which is never twice
the same, and decide, practically blindfold, and after I have decided
have the accuser take back the accusation in block and beg for mercy for
the culprit. Conceive the annoyance of all this when you are very fond
of both.--Your affectionate friend,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO E. L. BURLINGAME

_Vailima Plantation, Samoan Islands, Oct. 10th, 1892._

MY DEAR BURLINGAME,--It is now, as you see, the 10th of October, and
there has not reached the Island of Upolu one single copy, or rag of a
cop