and gossip is the common resource of all. The town hums to the day's
news, and the bars are crowded with amateur politicians. Some are office-
seekers, and earwig king and consul, and compass the fall of officials,
with an eye to salary. Some are humorists, delighted with the pleasure
of faction for itself. "I never saw so good a place as this Apia," said
one of these; "you can be in a new conspiracy every day!" Many, on the
other hand, are sincerely concerned for the future of the country. The
quarters are so close and the scale is so small, that perhaps not any one
can be trusted always to preserve his temper. Every one tells everything
he knows; that is our country sickness. Nearly every one has been
betrayed at times, and told a trifle more; the way our sickness takes the
predisposed. And the news flies, and the tongues wag, and fists are
shaken. Pot boil and caldron bubble!

Within the memory of man, the white people of Apia lay in the worst
squalor of degradation. They are now unspeakably improved, both men and
women. To-day they must be called a more than fairly respectable
population, and a much more than fairly intelligent. The whole would
probably not fill the ranks of even an English half-battalion, yet there
are a surprising number above the average in sense, knowledge, and
manners. The trouble (for Samoa) is that they are all here after a
livelihood. Some are sharp practitioners, some are famous (justly or
not) for foul play in business. Tales fly. One merchant warns you
against his neighbour; the neighbour on the first occasion is found to
return the compliment: each with a good circumstantial story to the
proof. There is so much copra in the islands, and no more; a man's share
of it is his share of bread; and commerce, like politics, is here
narrowed to a focus, shows its ugly side, and becomes as personal as
fisticuffs. Close at their elbows, in all this contention, stands the
native looking on. Like a child, his true analogue, he observes,