UNIV. OF some of the Africans to have come from parts I know one from Ndonde on the Rovuma - and all had learned some handicraft, besides reading, writing, etc., and it is probable that some of them will go back to their own country with me. Eight have since volunteered to go. Besides these I am to get some men from the Marine Battalion who have been accustomed to rough it in various ways, and their pensions will be given to their widows if they should die. The Governor [Sir Bartle Frere] is going to do what he can for my success. After going back to Bombay I came up to near Poonah, and am now at Government House, the guest of the Governor. Society here consists mainly of officers and their wives. .. Miss Frere, in the absence of Lady Frere, does the honors of the establishment, and very nicely she does it. She is very clever, and quite unaffected father. - very like her Christianity is gradually diffusing itself, leavening as it were in various ways the whole mass. When a man becomes a professor of Christianity, he is at present cast out, abandoned by all his relations, even by his wife and children. This state of things makes some who don't care about Christian progress say that all Christian servants are useless. They are degraded by their own countrymen, and despised by others, but time will work changes. Mr. Maine, who came out here with us, intends to introduce a law whereby a convert deserted by his wife may marry again. It is in accordance with the text in Corinthians: If an unbelieving wife depart, let her depart.' People will gradually show more sympathy with the poor fellows who come out of heathenism, and discriminate between the worthy and unworthy. You should read Lady Duff Gordon's Letters from Egypt. They show a nice sympathizing heart, and are otherwise very interesting. She saw the people as they are. Most people see only the outside of things. Avoid all nasty French novels. They are very injurious, and effect a lasting injury on the mind and heart. I go up to Government House again three days hence, and am to deliver two lectures one at Poonah, and one - at Bombay. LXVII R. L. Stevenson to his Mother1 MY DEAR MOTHER: ... Wick, Friday, September 11, 1868. Wick lies at the end or elbow of an open triangular bay, hemmed on either side by shores, either cliff of steep earth-bank of no great height. The gray houses of Pulteney extend along the southerly shore to the cape; and it is about half-way down this shore - that - no, six-sevenths way down the new breakwater extends athwart the bay. Certainly Wick in itself possesses no beauty: bare gray shores, grim gray houses, grim gray sea; not even the gleam of red tiles; not even the greenness of a tree. The southerly heights, when I came here, were black with people, fishing waiting on wind and night. Now all the S. Y. S. (Stornoway boats) have beaten out of the bay, and the Wick men stay indoors, or wrangle on the quays with dissatisfied fish-curers, knee-high in brine, mud, and herring refuse. The day when the boats put out to go home to the Hebrides, the girl here told me there was 6 a black wind'; and on going out I found the epithet as justifiable as it was picturesque. A cold, black southerly wind, with occasional rising showers of rain; it was a fine sight to see the boats beat out a-teeth of it. 1 From The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson. Copyright, 1899, by Charles Scribner's Sons. In Wick I have never heard any one greet his neighbor with the usual' Fine day!' or 'Good morning!' Both come shaking their heads, and both say, 'Breezy, breezy!' And such is the atrocious quality of the climate that the remark is almost invariably justified by the fact. The streets are full of the Highland fishers, lubberly, stupid, inconceivably lazy and heavy to move. You bruise against them, tumble over them, elbow them against the wall. - all to no purpose; they will not budge; and you are forced to leave the pavement every step. To the south, however, is as fine a piece of coast scenery as I ever saw. Great black chasms, huge black cliffs, rugged and overhung gullies, natural arches, and deep green pools below them, almost too deep to let you see the gleam of sand among the darker weed; there are deep caves, too. In one of these lives a tribe of gipsies. The men are always drunk, simply and truthfully always. From morning to evening the great villainous-looking fellows are either sleeping off the last debauch, or hulking about the cove in the horrors.' The cave is deep, high, and airy, and might be made comfortable enough. But they just live among heaped boulders, damp with continual droppings from above, with no more furniture than two or three tin pans, a truss of rotten straw, and a few ragged cloaks. In winter the surf bursts into the mouth, and often forces them to abandon it. An émeute1 of disappointed fishers was feared, and two ships of war are in the bay to render assistance to the municipal authorities. This is the Ides; and, to all intents and purposes, said Ides are passed. Still there is a good deal of disturbance, many drunk men, and a double supply of police. I saw them sent for by some people, and enter an inn in a pretty good hurry; what it was for I do not know. 1 Outbreak.-EDS. You would see by papa's letter about the carpenter who fell off the staging; I don't think I was ever so much excited in my life. The man was back at his work, and I asked him how he was; but he was a Highlander, and - need I add it? dickens a word could I understand of his answer. What is still worse, I find the people hereabout that is to say, the Highlanders, not the northmen don't understand me. I have lost a shilling's worth of postage stamps, which has damped my ardor for buying big lots of 'em: I'll buy them one at a time as I want 'em for the future. The Free Church minister and I got quite thick. He left last night about two in the morning, when I went to turn in. He gave me the enclosed. Look at Bishop Wilson on the sin of covetousness, and then inspect your umbrella-stand. You will there see a beautiful brown smooth-handled umbrella which is NOT your property. Think of what the excellent prelate would have advised, and bring it with you next time you come to the club. The porter will take care of it for me. Ever yours faithfully, T. H. HUXLEY. LXIX Lewis Carroll to Isabel The Chestnuts, Guildford, August 22, 1869. MY DEAR ISABEL: Though I have only been acquainted with you for fifteen minutes, yet as there is no one else in Reading I have known so long, I hope you will not mind my troubling you. Before I met you in the Gardens yesterday I bought some old books at a shop in Reading, which I left to be called for, and had not time to go back for them. I did not even remark the name of the shop, but I can tell where it was, and if you know the name of the woman who keeps the shop, and would put it into the blank I have left in this note, and direct it to her, I should be much obliged. . . . A friend of mine, called Mr. Lewis Carroll, tells me he means to send you a book. He is a very dear friend of mine. I have known him all my life we are the same age- and have never left him. course he was with me in the Gardens, not a yard off while I was drawing those puzzles for you. I wonder if you saw him? Of even Your fifteen-minute friend, C. L. DODGSON. LXX Alfred Tennyson to John White Farringford, March 8th, 1870. DEAR SIR: Your present has rather amazed me, though not unpleasantly; so I accept it with thanks, and I will sit by the 'blue 1 'He received from a stranger, Mr. John White of Cowes, a melancholy letter, and a present of a cart-load of wood-old oak from one of the brokenup men-of-war.' |