_Vailima_, _Samoa_ [_November_ 1891].
MY DEAR LOUISA,—Your picture of the church, the photograph of yourself
and your sister, and your very witty and pleasing letter, came all in a
bundle, and made me feel I had my money’s worth for that birthday. I am
now, I must be, one of your nearest relatives; exactly what we are to
each other, I do not know, I doubt if the case has ever happened
before—your papa ought to know, and I don’t believe he does; but I think
I ought to call you in the meanwhile, and until we get the advice of
counsel learned in the law, my name-daughter. Well, I was extremely
pleased to see by the church that my name-daughter could draw; by the
letter, that she was no fool; and by the photograph, that she was a
pretty girl, which hurts nothing. See how virtues are rewarded! My
first idea of adopting you was entirely charitable; and here I find that
I am quite proud of it, and of you, and that I chose just the kind of
name-daughter I wanted. For I can draw too, or rather I mean to say I
could before I forgot how; and I am very far from being a fool myself,
however much I may look it; and I am as beautiful as the day, or at least
I once hoped that perhaps I might be going to be. And so I might. So
that you see we are well met, and peers on these important points. I am
_very_ glad also that you are older than your sister. So should I have
been, if I had had one. So that the number of points and virtues which
you have inherited from your name-father is already quite surprising.
I wish you would tell your father—not that I like to encourage my
rival—that we have had a wonderful time here of late, and that they are
having a cold day on Mulinuu, and the consuls are writing reports, and I
am writing to the _Times_, and if we don’t get rid of our friends this
time I shall begin to despair of everything but my name-daughter.
You are quite wrong as to the effect of the birthday on your age. From
the moment the deed was registered (as it was in the public press with
every solemnity), the 13th of November became your own _and only_
birthday, and you ceased to have been born on Christmas Day. Ask your
father: I am sure he will tell you this is sound law. You are thus
become a month and twelve days younger than you were, but will go on
growing older for the future in the regular and human manner from one
13th November to the next. The effect on me is more doubtful; I may, as
you suggest, live for ever; I might, on the other hand, come to pieces
like the one-horse shay at a moment’s notice; doubtless the step was
risky, but I do not the least regret that which enables me to sign myself
your revered and delighted name-father,