must be remembered that the better class of Samoans are gentlefolk, and are undistinguishable, so far as good manners, good breeding and tact are concerned, from the ordinary man of the world of our own country. No Spaniard is more punctilious in matters of etiquette, no German prouder of his long pedigree, than these handsome and stalwart barbarians; and their language is even enriched by a whole vocabulary of courtesy with which every chief must be familiar. In fact, the rudeness, boorishness, and pretentiousness of many whites is often sharply criticised and condemned.

In number the Vailima family varied from thirteen to twenty-one, a picked lot of young men that for physique, good manners, obedience, and manliness it would be hard to match in any country. It must be said that Mr. Stevenson's methods of discipline had much to do with this favorable result. Unquestioning and absolute obedience was insisted upon; no order once given was ever altered or modified, and the singular and unforeseen partiality of Samoans (the most casual of mankind) for system, for an ordered and regulated existence, for a harness of daily routine, was taken advantage of to the fullest degree. Every man had his work outlined for him in advance, and several even possessed type-written lists of their various duties. Little proclamations and notices were often posted up in order to correct petty irregularities, and to define the responsibility and authority of each member of the household. For breaches of discipline, untruthfulness, absence without leave, etc., money fines were imposed with rigorous impartiality, and for more serious offences a regular court martial was held. No one was ever fined without his first assenting to the justice of the punishment, and the culprit was always given the option of receiving his money in full, and being dismissed the place. A leaf, too, was taken with advantage from the old Naval Regulations, and no man was ever punished the same day of the offence. The fines themselves went into the coffers of the rival missionary societies, Protestant or Roman Catho

lic, according to the creed of the involuntary donor. A lecture often fell to the lot of the wrong-doer that he relished even less than the penalty of his offence, and the summing up of an important "suega" or trial was always listened to in breathless silence by the members of the household. It ran usually to something of this sort:

you

'Fiaali'i, you have confessed that stole the cooked pigs, the taro, the palusamis, the breadfruit, and fish that fell to Vailima's portion at the great feast. Your wish to eat was greater than your wish to be a gentleman. You have shown a bad heart and your sin is a great one, not alone for the pigs which count as naught, but because you have been false to your family. Even a German black-boy that knows not God and whom you despise, would not have done what you have done. It is easy to say that you are sorry, that you wish you were dead but' that is no answer. We have lost far more than a few dozen baskets of food; we have lost our trust in you, which used to be so great, our confidence in your loyalty and high-chiefness. See how many bad things have resulted from your sin! First, you have told many lies and have tried to screen your wickedness by a trick, saying that five baskets was all the feast apportioned to us, thus bringing shame on the gentleman who gave it. Secondly, you persuaded Ti'a, Tulafono, and Satupaiala to join in your conspiracy, which they did not wish to do at first, they being like Eve in the garden and you the serpent. You have hurt all our hearts here, not because of the pigs, but because we are ashamed and mortified before the world. If this thing gets spoken of and carried from house to house, we shall be ashamed to walk along the road, for people will mock at us, and the name of Vailima will not be fragrant. Then if it reaches the ears of the great chiefs that treated us so handsomely, are we to say: "Be not angry, gentlemen, four of our family are thieves; their respect and love for me is great, but their wish to eat pig is greater still!" There are great sins that are easily forgiven: there are others that are hard to pardon. It is better to obey a strong and angry heart than to obey

the belly. I am not your father; I am not your chief. The belly is your chief! But God has not given all my children bad hearts. Look at Leupolu. He was not like T'i'a, Tulafono, and Satupaiala; he was a brave man, though he was only one and you so many. He said you were doing a wicked thing; he would not surrender his burden of food, nor did the fear of ghosts prevent him coming home in the dark. For if a man is brave in uprightness he is brave in all other ways. But Leupolu loved his family more than his belly. And when he came home he did not make a great cry, nor did he tell the story of your wickedness. He went about with a sad face and said nothing, for he was like myself, angry but sorrowful. He will be rewarded for his love with a new kilt and a suitable jacket. Ti'a, Tulafono, and Satupaiala are each fined two dollars. Fiaali'i, you are fined thirty dollars to be paid in weekly instalments. When the whole thirty-six dollars is ready it will be handed you, and you will make us a great feast here in Vailima by way of atonement, and for every pig there shall be two pigs, and for every taro, two taro, and so on and more also. You shall be the host, but you shall call none of your friends to the feast, nor Tia, Tulafono, nor Satupaiala, but the others shall invite their friends. Then you will be forgiven and this thing forgotten. We live only by the highchief-will of God, nor must we be cruel to one another when the High-ChiefSon of God is so good to us all. One word must still be said. Let the story of this wicked business be buried in your hearts, lest strangers talk of it. Fiaa

li'i and the others have been tried and punished, and their penalties must not be increased by mockery or reproaches. Think of your own sins and hold your peace. This trial is finished. Sosimo, Mitaele, and Pulu will make 'ava for us all, and it will be called on the front veranda."

But Mr. Stevenson was not only the judge in the household, the meter out of punishments and rewards; he was the real "matai" or head of the family, and was always ready, no matter how busy he might be, or how much immersed in literary work, to turn a

friendly ear to the plaints of his people. He was consulted on every imaginable subject, and all manner of petty persecutions and petty injustices were put right by his strong arm. Government chiefs and rebels consulted him with regard to policy; political letters were brought to him to read and criticise; his native following was so widely divided in party that he was often kept better informed on current events than any one person in the country. Old gentlemen would arrive in stately procession with squealing pigs for the "chief-house of wisdom," and would beg advice on the capitation-tax or some such subject of the hour; an armed party would come from across the island with gifts, and a request that Tusitala would take charge of the funds of the village and buy the roof-iron for a proposed church. Parties would come to hear the latest news of the proposed disarming of the country, or to arrange a private audience with one of the officials; and poor, war-worn chieftains, whose only anxiety was to join the winning side, and who wished to consult with Tusitala as to which that might be. Mr. Stevenson would sigh sometimes as he saw these stately folk crossing the lawn in single file, their attendants following behind with presents and baskets, but he never failed to meet or hear them.

It has often been asked what gave Mr. Stevenson his standing in Samoa; what it was that made this English man of letters such a power in the land of his adoption. It must be remembered that to the Samoan mind he was inordinately rich, and many of them believe

in the bottom of their hearts that the story of the bottle-imp was no fiction, but a tangible fact. Mr. Stevenson was a resident, a considerable land-owner, a man like themselves, with taro-swamps, banana plantations, and a Samoan "aiga" or family. He was no official with a hired house, here to-day with specious good will on his lips, and empty promises, but off to-morrow in the mail steamer to that vague region called "papa lagi" "or the white country." He knew Samoan etiquette, and was familiar with the baser as well as the better side of the native character;

he was cautiously generous after the fashion of the country, and neither excited covetousness by undue prodigality nor failed to respond in a befitting way for favors received. Moreover, he was a consistent partisan of Mataafa, the ill-fated rebel king, a man of high and noble character, who though beaten and crushed by the government forces was nevertheless looked up to and covertly admired by all Samoa. The divinity that doth hedge a king, even a defeated and fallen one, cast a glamour over his close friend, Mr. Stevenson. And when the British man - of- war brought the unfortunate ex-king to Apia with many of his chiefs, it was Mr. Stevenson that first boarded the ship with sympathy and assistance; it was Mr. Stevenson that lighted the great ovens and brought down his men weighted with food - baskets when all were afraid and stood aloof; it was Mr. Stevenson that attended to the political prisoners in the noisome jail after they had been flogged through the streets and foully mishandled under the very guns of the men-of-war; it was Mr. Stevenson that brought and paid the doctor, that had the stinking prison cleansed, that fed the starving wretches from his own pocket until officialdom was shamed and terrified into action. These things made a deep impression at the time, and will never be altogether forgotten. No wonder the government chiefs said to one another: "Behold, this is indeed a friend; would our white officials have done the same had the day gone against us?" And the expression, "Once Tusitala's friend, always Tusitala's friend," went about the countryside like a proverb.

Mr. Stevenson's relations with the missionary bodies, the two Protestant and the Roman Catholic, were particularly happy. He stood very high in the esteem and love of all three, for though a candid critic, he was in the keenest sympathy with their work and their way of doing it, and was ever outspoken in his admiration of their highmindedness, unsectarianism, and honest endeavor to improve the people. His friendship and regard was no less generously returned; and they opened their hearts to him, freely and frankly,

on many a delicate matter undivulged to the general world; for together they stood on the common ground of regard for Samoa and devotion to its welfare. Would that I could say the same of our officials, or characterize Mr. Stevenson's relations with the most of them in the same strain; but it must be confessed that to them he was the bête noir of the country, or, a better simile, the Samoan Jove, whose thunderbolts carried consternation far and wide. In vain they attempted to deport him from the island, to close his mouth by regulation, to post spies about his house and involve him in the illicit importation of arms and fixed ammunition. The natives looked on in wonder, and when the officials vanished and the undaunted Tusitala remained behind, they drew their own conclusions.

But of the many causes that went to make Mr. Stevenson a considerable figure in his adopted country, his own personality after all was the chiefest. If his ardent, sympathetic individuality shines so convincingly through the text of his books that it makes friends of those who but dimly understand his work, how much more was it the case in far Samoa, where no printed page intervened between the man and his fellows, where his voice reached first hand and swayed-not literary coteries in the heart of civilization, but war-scarred chiefs with guns in their hands and bitter wrongs to right. He would have been loved and followed anywhere, but how much more in poor, misgoverned, war-distracted Samoa, so remote, so inarticulate; for he was one of the Greathearts of this world both in pen and deed, and many were those he led through sorrow and tribulation to the gates of the City Beautiful.

The current of life ran very placidly in Vailima, in spite of the little agitations and bitternesses of the tiny world at our feet. The conch-shell awakened the household at daybreak, and the routine of existence went forward unchanged, for all that the cannon might boom from the men-of-war, and the mellow trumpets proclaim the march of armed men. At times a war-party would halt at our front veranda, discuss a bowl of 'ava with the head of

the house, and melt picturesquely away again in the forest, with perhaps a feu de joie in honor of their hosta compliment that he would gladly have dispensed with. Meals were served in the great hall of Vailima, a noble room over fifty feet long and proportionately broad, of which Mr. Stevenson was pardonably proud. At half past two the clapping of hands announced that 'ava was prepared-that peculiar beverage of the South Pacific -and when everyone was assembled it was called and distributed in the Samoan manner, Mr. Stevenson receiving the first cup according to the dictates of etiquette. There were always visitors living in the house, and the cool of the afternoon often brought callers from the "beach," officers from the men-of-war, missionaries, officials, blue-jackets, local residents, priests, Mormon elders, passing tourists-all the flotsam and jetsam, in fact, of a petty port lying on one of the great thoroughfares of the world. It is hard for an outsider to realize the life and animation there is in Samoa. The American conjures up a picture of a frontier post; the Englishman harks to Kipling and station life in India; and both are wrong. Samoa is very cosmopolitan for all its insignificance on the map, and its white population of four hundred souls; balls, picnics, parties, are of common occurrence; there is a constant flow of news, rumor, and island gossip; and four steamers a month link the group to the outside world and bring an endless procession of strange faces across our little stage.

Mr. Stevenson was fond of amusement and hospitality, and apart from a constant succession of more formal luncheon parties and dinners, there was always room at his mahogany for the unexpected guests that the chef had orders to bear in mind. The first cotillon ever given in Samoa took place at Vailima; the first pony paper-chase was got up under Mr. Stevenson's direction;

he was always eager to bear his part in any scheme for the public entertainment and his support and subscription could always be reckoned on in advance. Nor was he less backward with regard to the natives, whom he often feasted in the Samoan way with great pomp and a rigorous regard to etiquette and custom. His birthday party was a veritable gathering of the clans, beginning at dawn and continuing uninterruptedly till dusk, with a huge feast and troops of dancers to entertain the people. A Christmas-tree rejoiced the household every year, and was the occasion of breathless anticipation and excitement; and the little fiesta was not unenhanced by the good-humored raillery with which the presents were distributed.

Mr. Stevenson could not be seen to better advantage than at the head of his faultless table, sharing and leading the conversation of the guests that various strange fates had brought together beneath his roof. He loved the contrast of evening dress and the half-naked attendants; the rough track that led the visitor through forest and jungle to this glowing house under Vaea, the juxtaposition of original Hogarths, Peranesis's pictures by Sargent, Lemon, and Will H. Low, the sculptured work of Rodin and Augustus St. Gaudens, with rifleracks, revolvers, and trophies of savage weapons. And the conversation was to match: English literature and copra; Paul Bourget's new book and the rebel loss at Tifitifi; European politics and the best methods of suppressing headtaking!

When he was detained in town at night or by some mischance was late of returning to Vailimą, it was his pleasure that the house should be lit throughout, so that he might see it shining through the forest on his home-coming. As I must now be drawing to an end, where better could I stop than at this picture: the tired man drawing rein in the "Road of the Loving Heart," and gazing up at the lights of home?

THE ART

OF

LIVING

THE CASE OF WOMAN

By Robert Grant

ILLUSTRATIONS BY W. H. HYDE

A

I

GREAT many men, who are sane and reasonable in other matters, allow themselves, on the slightest provocation, to be worked up into a fever over the aspirations of woman. They decline to listen to argument, grow red in the face, and saw the air with their hands, if they do not pound on the table, to express their views on the subject-which, by the way, are as out of date and old-fashioned as a pine-tree shilling. They remind one of the ostrich in that they seem to imagine, because they have buried their heads in the sand, nothing has happened or is happening around them. They confront the problem of woman's emancipation as though it were only just being broached instead of in the throes of delivery.

For instance, my friend, Mr. Julius

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Cæsar, who though a conservative, cautious man by nature, is agreeably and commendably liberal in other matters, seems to be able to see only one side of this question. And one side seems to be all he wishes to see. Take my wife," he said to me the other day; as women go she is a very clever and sensible woman. She was given the best advantages in the way of schooltraining open to young ladies of her day; she has accomplishments, domestic virtues, and fine religious instincts, and I adore her. But what does she know of politics? She couldn't tell you the difference between a senator and an alderman, and her mind is practically a blank on the tariff or the silver question. I tell you, my dear fellow, that if woman is allowed to leave the domestic hearth and play ducks and drakes with the right of suffrage, every political caucus will become a retail drygoods store. If there is one thing which makes a philosopher despair of the future of