_Honolulu_, _January_ 1889.
MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—Here at last I have arrived. We could not get away
from Tahiti till Christmas Day, and then had thirty days of calms and
squalls, a deplorable passage. This has thrown me all out of gear in
every way. I plunge into business.
1. _The Master_: Herewith go three more parts. You see he grows in
balk; this making ten already, and I am not yet sure if I can finish it
in an eleventh; which shall go to you _quam primum_—I hope by next mail.
2. _Illustrations to M_. I totally forgot to try to write to Hole. It
was just as well, for I find it impossible to forecast with sufficient
precision. You had better throw off all this and let him have it at
once. _Please do_: _all_, _and at once_: _see further_; and I should
hope he would still be in time for the later numbers. The three pictures
I have received are so truly good that I should bitterly regret having
the volume imperfectly equipped. They are the best illustrations I have
seen since I don’t know when.
3. _Money_. To-morrow the mail comes in, and I hope it will bring me
money either from you or home, but I will add a word on that point.
4. My address will be Honolulu—no longer Yacht _Casco_, which I am
packing off—till probably April.
5. As soon as I am through with _The Master_, I shall finish the _Game
of Bluff_—now rechristened _The Wrong Box_. This I wish to sell, cash
down. It is of course copyright in the States; and I offer it to you for
five thousand dollars. Please reply on this by return. Also please tell
the typewriter who was so good as to be amused by our follies that I am
filled with admiration for his piece of work.
6. _Master_ again. Please see that I haven’t the name of the Governor
of New York wrong (1764 is the date) in part ten. I have no book of
reference to put me right. Observe you now have up to August inclusive
in hand, so you should begin to feel happy.
Is this all? I wonder, and fear not. Henry the Trader has not yet
turned up: I hope he may to-morrow, when we expect a mail. Not one word
of business have I received either from the States or England, nor
anything in the shape of coin; which leaves me in a fine uncertainty and
quite penniless on these islands. H.M. {132} (who is a gentleman of a
courtly order and much tinctured with letters) is very polite; I may
possibly ask for the position of palace doorkeeper. My voyage has been a
singular mixture of good and ill-fortune. As far as regards interest and
material, the fortune has been admirable; as far as regards time, money,
and impediments of all kinds, from squalls and calms to rotten masts and
sprung spars, simply detestable. I hope you will be interested to hear
of two volumes on the wing. The cruise itself, you are to know, will
make a big volume with appendices; some of it will first appear as (what
they call) letters in some of M’Clure’s papers. I believe the book when
ready will have a fair measure of serious interest: I have had great
fortune in finding old songs and ballads and stories, for instance, and
have many singular instances of life in the last few years among these
islands.
The second volume is of ballads. You know _Ticonderoga_. I have written
another: _The Feast of Famine_, a Marquesan story. A third is half done:
_The Song of Rahero_, a genuine Tahitian legend. A fourth dances before
me. A Hawaiian fellow this, _The Priest’s Drought_, or some such name.
If, as I half suspect, I get enough subjects out of the islands,
_Ticonderoga_ shall be suppressed, and we’ll call the volume _South Sea
Ballads_. In health, spirits, renewed interest in life, and, I do
believe, refreshed capacity for work, the cruise has proved a wise folly.
Still we’re not home, and (although the friend of a crowned head) are
penniless upon these (as one of my correspondents used to call them)
‘lovely but _fatil_ islands.’ By the way, who wrote the _Lion of the
Nile_? My dear sir, that is Something Like. Overdone in bits, it has a
true thought and a true ring of language. Beg the anonymous from me, to
delete (when he shall republish) the two last verses, and end on ‘the
lion of the Nile.’ One Lampman has a good sonnet on a ‘Winter Evening’
in, I think, the same number: he seems ill named, but I am tempted to
hope a man is not always answerable for his name. {133} For instance,
you would think you knew mine. No such matter. It is—at your service
and Mr. Scribner’s and that of all of the faithful—Teriitera (pray
pronounce Tayree-Tayra) or (_gallicé_) Téri-téra.