of me; and I only hope they may enjoy the TIMES article.
'Tis my revenge! I wish you had sent the letter too, as I
have no copy, and do not even know what I wrote the last day,
with a bad headache, and the mail going out. However, it
must have been about right, for the TIMES article was in the
spirit I wished to arouse. I hope we can get rid of the man
before it is too late. He has set the natives to war; but
the natives, by God's blessing, do not want to fight, and I
think it will fizzle out - no thanks to the man who tried to
start it. But I did not mean to drift into these politics;
rather to tell you what I have done since I last wrote.

Well, I worked away at my History for a while, and only got
one chapter done; no doubt this spate of work is pretty low
now, and will be soon dry; but, God bless you, what a lot I
have accomplished; WRECKER done, BEACH OF FALESA done, half
the HISTORY: C'EST ETONNANT. (I hear from Burlingame, by the
way, that he likes the end of the WRECKER; 'tis certainly a
violent, dark yarn with interesting, plain turns of human
nature), then Lloyd and I went down to live in Haggard's
rooms, where Fanny presently joined us. Haggard's rooms are
in a strange old building - old for Samoa, and has the effect
of the antique like some strange monastery; I would tell you
more of it, but I think I'm going to use it in a tale. The
annexe close by had its door sealed; poor Dowdney lost at sea
in a schooner. The place is haunted. The vast empty sheds,
the empty store, the airless, hot, long, low rooms, the claps
of wind that set everything flying - a strange uncanny house
to spend Christmas in.