第18章 THE VAILIMA LETTERS(2)

"To come down covered with mud and drenched with sweat and rain after some hours in the bush, change, rub down, and take a chair in the verandah, is to taste a quiet conscience.And the strange thing that I mark is this: If I go out and make sixpence, bossing my labourers and plying the cutlass or the spade, idiot conscience applauds me; if I sit in the house and make twenty pounds, idiot conscience wails over my neglect and the day wasted."

His relish for companionship is indeed strong.At one place he says:

"God knows I don't care who I chum with perhaps I like sailors best, but to go round and sue and sneak to keep a crowd together -

never!"

If Stevenson's natural bent was to be an explorer, a mountain-

climber, or a sailor - to sail wide seas, or to range on mountain-

tops to gain free and extensive views - yet he inclines well to farmer work, and indeed, has to confess it has a rare attraction for him.

"I went crazy over outdoor work," he says at one place, "and had at last to confine myself to the house, or literature must have gone by the board.NOTHING is so interesting as weeding, clearing, and path-making: the oversight of labourers becomes a disease.It is quite an effort not to drop into the farmer; and it does make you feel so well."

The odd ways of these Samoans, their pride of position, their vices, their virtues, their vanities, their small thefts, their tricks, their delightful INSOUCIANCE sometimes, all amused him.He found in them a fine field of study and observation - a source of fun and fund of humanity - as this bit about the theft of some piglings will sufficiently prove:

"Last night three piglings were stolen from one of our pig-pens.

The great Lafaele appeared to my wife uneasy, so she engaged him in conversation on the subject, and played upon him the following engaging trick: You advance your two forefingers towards the sitter's eyes; he closes them, whereupon you substitute (on his eyelids) the fore and middle fingers of the left hand, and with your right (which he supposes engaged) you tap him on the head and back.When you let him open his eyes, he sees you withdrawing the two forefingers.'What that?' asked Lafaele.'My devil,' says Fanny.'I wake um, my devil.All right now.He go catch the man that catch my pig.' About an hour afterwards Lafaele came for further particulars.'Oh, all right,' my wife says.'By-and-by that man be sleep, devil go sleep same place.By-and-by that man plenty sick.I no care.What for he take my pig?' Lafaele cares plenty; I don't think he is the man, though he may be; but he knows him, and most likely will eat some of that pig to-night.He will not eat with relish.'"

Yet in spite of this R.L.Stevenson declares that:

"They are a perfectly honest people: nothing of value has ever been taken from our house, where doors and windows are always wide open; and upon one occasion when white ants attacked the silver chest, the whole of my family treasure lay spread upon the floor of the hall for two days unguarded."

Here is a bit on a work of peace, a reflection on a day's weeding at Vailima - in its way almost as touching as any:

"I wonder if any one had ever the same attitude to Nature as I hold, and have held for so long? This business fascinates me like a tune or a passion; yet all the while I thrill with a strong distaste.The horror of the thing, objective and subjective, is always present to my mind; the horror of creeping things, a superstitious horror of the void and the powers about me, the horror of my own devastation and continual murders.The life of the plants comes through my finger-tips, their struggles go to my heart like supplications.I feel myself blood-boltered; then I look back on my cleared grass, and count myself an ally in a fair quarrel, and make stout my heart."

Here, again, is the way in which he celebrates an act of friendly kindness on the part of Mr Gosse:

"MY DEAR GOSSE, - Your letter was to me such a bright spot that I answer it right away to the prejudice of other correspondents or -

dants (don't know how to spell it) who have prior claims....It is the history of our kindnesses that alone makes this world tolerable.If it were not for that, for the effect of kind words, kind looks, kind letters, multiplying, spreading, making one happy through another and bringing forth benefits, some thirty, some fifty, some a thousandfold, I should be tempted to think our life a practical jest in the worst possible spirit.So your four pages have confirmed my philosophy as well as consoled my heart in these ill hours."