. . . O, I don’t know if I mentioned that having seen your new tail to
the magazine, I cried off interference, at least for this trip. Did I
ask you to send me my books and papers, and all the bound volumes of the
mag.? _quorum pars_. I might add that were there a good book or so—new—I
don’t believe there is—such would be welcome.
I desire—I positively begin to awake—to be remembered to Scribner, Low,
St. Gaudens, Russell Sullivan. Well, well, you fellows have the feast of
reason and the flow of soul; I have a better-looking place and climate:
you should hear the birds on the hill now! The day has just wound up
with a shower; it is still light without, though I write within here at
the cheek of a lamp; my wife and an invaluable German are wrestling about
bread on the back verandah; and how the birds and the frogs are rattling,
and piping, and hailing from the woods! Here and there a throaty
chuckle; here and there, cries like those of jolly children who have lost
their way; here and there, the ringing sleigh-bell of the tree frog. Out
and away down below me on the sea it is still raining; it will be wet
under foot on schooners, and the house will leak; how well I know that!
Here the showers only patter on the iron roof, and sometimes roar; and
within, the lamp burns steady on the tafa-covered walls, with their dusky
tartan patterns, and the book-shelves with their thin array of books; and
no squall can rout my house or bring my heart into my mouth.—The
well-pleased South Sea Islander,