Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson
page 12 of 311 (03%)
page 12 of 311 (03%)
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trying all round for a place to hold my pen; you will hear
why later on; this to explain penmanship.) I wrote two pages, very bad, no movement, no life or interest; then I wrote a business letter; then took to tootling on the flageolet, till glory should call me farmering. I took up at the fit time Lafaele and Mauga - Mauga, accent on the first, is a mountain, I don't know what Mauga means - mind what I told you of the value of g - to the garden, and set them digging, then turned my attention to the path. I could not go into my bush path for two reasons: 1st, sore hands; 2nd, had on my trousers and good shoes. Lucky it was. Right in the wild lime hedge which cuts athwart us just homeward of the garden, I found a great bed of kuikui - sensitive plant - our deadliest enemy. A fool brought it to this island in a pot, and used to lecture and sentimentalise over the tender thing. The tender thing has now taken charge of this island, and men fight it, with torn hands, for bread and life. A singular, insidious thing, shrinking and biting like a weasel; clutching by its roots as a limpet clutches to a rock. As I fought him, I bettered some verses in my poem, the WOODMAN; the only thought I gave to letters. Though the kuikui was thick, there was but a small patch of it, and when I was done I attacked the wild lime, and had a hand-to-hand skirmish with its spines and elastic suckers. All this time, close by, in the cleared space of the garden, Lafaele and Mauga were digging. Suddenly quoth Lafaele, 'Somebody he sing out.' - 'Somebody he sing out? All right. I go.' And I went and found they had been whistling and 'singing out' for long, but the fold of the hill and the uncleared bush |
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