_Vailima_, _Apia_, _Samoa_, _April_ 1891.
MY DEAR MAY,—I never think of you by any more ceremonial name, so I will
not pretend. There is not much chance that I shall forget you until the
time comes for me to forget all this little turmoil in a corner (though
indeed I have been in several corners) of an inconsiderable planet. You
remain in my mind for a good reason, having given me (in so short a time)
the most delightful pleasure. I shall remember, and you must still be
beautiful. The truth is, you must grow more so, or you will soon be
less. It is not so easy to be a flower, even when you bear a flower’s
name. And if I admired you so much, and still remember you, it is not
because of your face, but because you were then worthy of it, as you must
still continue.
Will you give my heartiest congratulations to Mr. S.? He has my
admiration; he is a brave man; when I was young, I should have run away
from the sight of you, pierced with the sense of my unfitness. He is
more wise and manly. What a good husband he will have to be! And
you—what a good wife! Carry your love tenderly. I will never forgive
him—or you—it is in both your hands—if the face that once gladdened my
heart should be changed into one sour or sorrowful.
What a person you are to give flowers! It was so I first heard of you;
and now you are giving the May flower!
Yes, Skerryvore has passed; it was, for us. But I wish you could see us
in our new home on the mountain, in the middle of great woods, and
looking far out over the Pacific. When Mr. S. is very rich, he must
bring you round the world and let you see it, and see the old gentleman
and the old lady. I mean to live quite a long while yet, and my wife
must do the same, or else I couldn’t manage it; so, you see, you will
have plenty of time; and it’s a pity not to see the most beautiful
places, and the most beautiful people moving there, and the real stars
and moon overhead, instead of the tin imitations that preside over
London. I do not think my wife very well; but I am in hopes she will now
have a little rest. It has been a hard business, above all for her; we
lived four months in the hurricane season in a miserable house, overborne
with work, ill-fed, continually worried, drowned in perpetual rain,
beaten upon by wind, so that we must sit in the dark in the evenings; and
then I ran away, and she had a month of it alone. Things go better now;
the back of the work is broken; and we are still foolish enough to look
forward to a little peace. I am a very different person from the
prisoner of Skerryvore. The other day I was three-and-twenty hours in an
open boat; it made me pretty ill; but fancy its not killing me half-way!
It is like a fairy story that I should have recovered liberty and
strength, and should go round again among my fellow-men, boating, riding,
bathing, toiling hard with a wood-knife in the forest. I can wish you
nothing more delightful than my fortune in life; I wish it you; and
better, if the thing be possible.
Lloyd is tinkling below me on the typewriter; my wife has just left the
room; she asks me to say she would have written had she been well enough,
and hopes to do it still.—Accept the best wishes of your admirer,