_Stickit Minister_,[68] and dedicated it to me, in
words that brought the tears to my eyes every time I looked at them.
"Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying. _His_
heart remembers how." Ah, by God, it does! Singular that I should fulfil
the Scots destiny throughout, and live a voluntary exile, and have my
head filled with the blessed, beastly place all the time!

And now a word as regards the delusions of the dear Ross, who remembers,
I believe, my letters and Fanny's when we were first installed, and were
really hoeing a hard row. We have salad, beans, cabbages, tomatoes,
asparagus, kohl-rabi, oranges, limes, barbadines, pine-apples, Cape
gooseberries--galore; pints of milk and cream; fresh meat five days a
week. It is the rarest thing for any of us to touch a tin; and the
gnashing of teeth when it has to be done is dreadful--for no one who has
not lived on them for six months knows what the Hatred of the Tin is. As
for exposure, my weakness is certainly the reverse; I am sometimes a
month without leaving the verandah--for my sins, be it said! Doubtless,
when I go about and, as the Doctor says, "expose myself to malaria," I
am in far better health; and I would do so more too--for I do not mean
to be silly--but the difficulties are great. However, you see how much
the dear Doctor knows of my diet and habits! Malaria practically does
not exist in these islands; it is a negligeable quantity. What really
bothers us a little is the mosquito affair--the so-called
elephantiasis--ask Ross about it. A real romance of natural history,
_quoi_!

Hi! stop! you say _The Ebb Tide_ is the "working out of an artistic
problem of a kind." Well, I should just bet it was! You don't like
Attwater. But look at my three rogues; they're all there, I'll go bail.
Three types of the bad man, the weak man, and the strong man with a
weakness, that are gone through and lived out.

Yes, of course I was sorry for Mataafa, but a good deal sorrier and
angrier about the mismanagement of all the white officials. I cannot
bear to write about that. Manono all destroyed, one house standing in
Apolima, the women stripped, the prisoners beaten with whips--and the
women's heads taken--all under white auspices. And for upshot and result
of so much shame to the white powers--Tamasese already conspiring! as I
knew and preached in vain must be the case! Well, well, it is no fun to
meddle in politics!

I suppose you're right about Simon.[