receive our injured friend alone; and the interview must have lasted hard upon an hour, for he was loath to tear himself away. "You go 'way. I see you no more no, sir!" he lamented; and then looking about him with rueful admiration, "This goodee ship!-no, sir!goodee ship!" he would exclaim: the "no, sir,'' thrown out sharply through the nose upon a rising inflection, an echo from New Bedford and the fallacious whaler. From these expressions of grief and praise, he would return continually to the case of the rejected pig. "I like give plesent all the same you,' "he complained; "only got pig: you no take him!'' he was a poor man; he had no choice of gifts; he had only a pig, he repeated; and I had refused it. I have rarely been more wretched than to see him sitting there, so old, so grey, so poor, so hardly fortuned, of so rueful a countenance, and to appreciate, with growing keenness, the affront which I had so innocently dealt him; but it was one of those cases in which speech is vain. Tari's son was smiling and inert; his daughter-in-law, a girl of sixteen, pretty, gentle, and grave, more intelligent than most Anaho women, and with a fair share of French; his grandchild, a mite of a creature at the breast. I went up the den one day when Tari was from home, and found the son making a cotton sack, and madame suckling mademoiselle. When I had sat down with them on the floor, the girl began to question me about England; which I tried to describe, piling the pan and the cocoa shells one upon another to represent the houses, and explaining, as best I was able, and by word and gesture, the over-population, the hunger, and the perpetual toil. "Pas de cocotiers? pas de popoi?'' she asked. I told her it was too cold, and went through an elaborate performance, shutting out draughts, and crouching over an imaginary fire, to make sure she understood. But she understood right well; remarked it must be bad for the health, and sat a while gravely reflecting on that picture of unwonted sorrows. I am sure it roused her pity, for it struck in her another thought always uppermost in the Marquesan bosom; and she began with a smiling sadness, and looking on me out of melancholy eyes, to lament the decease of her own people. "Ici pas de Kanaques,'' said she; and taking the baby from her breast, she held it out to me with both her hands. "Tenez-a little baby like this; then dead. All the Kanaques die. Then no more." The smile, and this instancing by the girl-mother of her own tiny flesh and blood, affected me strangely; they spoke of so tranquil a despair. Meanwhile the husband smilingly made his sack; and the unconscious babe struggled to reach a pot of raspberry jam, friendship's offering, which I had just brought up the den; and in a perspective of centuries I saw their case as ours, death coming in like a tide, and the day already numbered when there should be no more Beretani, and no more of any race whatever, and (what oddly touched me) no more literary works and no more readers. THE VAGABOND Give to me the life I love, And the byway nigh me. Bread I dip in the river- Let the blow fall soon or late, Nor a friend to know me; Or let autumn fall on me Biting the blue finger: Not to winter even! Let the blow fall soon or late, 6 I. e., Britanni, Britons. The language of the Kanakas being so largely vocalic, they find it difficult to pronounce two consonants in succession without interposing a vowel. 7 The leave, the rest; a familiar word in Burns. INDEX TO NOTES, AND GLOSSARY The page number is given first; a superior numeral or character indicates the note. When it Not all notes are indexed. Notes upon authors and titles may be found through the indexes to The glossary is inserted here in one alphabetical order with the index, but the words begin Angelico, Fra, 61918, 6831. Apollo, 612, 23119, 4668, 569†, 711. Arabian Nights, 553, 5541, 674*. Archangels, 13913. Archimago, 1304. Areopagus, 2621. Arethusa, 23120, 23239. Argo, Argonauts, 305*, 482a line 13. See Elixir vitae; Philosopher's Arion, 23253, 2808. Alcibiades's dog, 366. Ale-stake, 5118. Alexander the Great, 2333, 283b1, 3217. Aloes, 6710. Alphabet, 215*, 46713. Alpheus, 23239. Amadis de Gaul, 20133. Amaranth, 23246. Ammon, 22635, 3217. among, all the time, everywhere, 80b1, 891. Amphion, 15724, 17310, 530o. an, an', and, if, 705, 2013. Anacreon, 466, 46714. Anagrams, 154, 15410. Anapestic metres, 450*, 609*. Andromeda, 663‡. Angel gold, 2752. Augustus, 2801. Aurora, dawn, 22719, Ausonian, 24287. Brabant, 651. brae, bank, hillside, 3999. Avalon, Avilion, 32a line 18, 11020, 577*. See brand, sword, 277. bent, dry grass, stubble land, 21923, 4741, 6252, card compass, 3236, 4086. Blank verse, first employed, 125*; dramatic, 159t. Catullus, 596b*. |