cadences." I
borrow this explanation from the late Mr. Lafarge's notes to his
catalogue of South Sea Drawings. It may serve to make clearer
several passages in later letters of the present collection. Readers
of the late Lord Pembroke's _South Sea Bubbles_ will remember the
account of this beverage and its preparation in Chap. viii. of that
volume.

[43] Referring to the marriage contract in the _Beach of Falesa:_ see
above, p. 152.

[44] This about the consulship was only a passing notion on the part
of R. L. S. No vacancy occurred, and in his correspondence he does
not recur to the subject.

[45] I had not cared to send him the story as thus docked and
rechristened in its serial shape.

[46] Austin Strong, on his way to school in California.

[47] By Emile Zola.

[48] The reference is to the writer's maternal cousin, Mr. Graham
Balfour (_Samoice_, "Pelema"), who during these months and again
later was an inmate of the home at Vailima: see above, p. 223.

[49] Robert MacQueen, Lord Braxfield, the "Hanging Judge,"
(1722-1799). This historical personage furnished the conception of
the chief character, but by no means the details or incidents of the
story, which is indeed dated some years after his death.

[50] The allusion is to _Tess_: a book R. L. S. did not like.

[51] A character in _The Wrecker_.

[52] Exactly what in the end actually happened.

[53] Austin Strong.

[54] This tale was withheld from the volume accordingly.

[55] The magazine in which _Catriona_ first appeared in this
country, under the title _David Balfour_.

XIII

LIFE IN SAMOA--_Continued_

THIRD YEAR AT VAILIMA

JANUARY-DECEMBER 1893

By the New Year of 1893 the fine addition to the house at Vailima was
finished, and its pleasantness and comfort went far to console Stevenson
for the cost. But the year was on the whole a less fortunate one for the
inmates than the last. A proclamation concerning penalties for sedition
in the Samoan Islands, which from its tenor could have been aimed at no
one else but Stevenson, had been issued at the close of 1892 by the High
Commissioner at Fiji; and with its modification and practical
withdrawal, by order of the Foreign Office at home, the last threat of
unpleasant consequences in connection with his political action
disappeared. But a sharp second attack of influenza in January lowered
his