I recall with interest two interviews with Stanislao.  The first was a certain afternoon of tropic rain, which we passed together in the verandah of the club; talking at times with heightened voices as the showers redoubled overhead, passing at times into the billiard-room, to consult, in the dim, cloudy daylight, that map of the world which forms its chief adornment.  He was naturally ignorant of English history, so that I had much of news to communicate.  The story of Gordon I told him in full, and many episodes of the Indian Mutiny, Lucknow, the second battle of Cawn-pore, the relief of Arrah, the death of poor Spottis-woode, and Sir Hugh Rose’s hotspur, midland campaign.  He was intent to hear; his brown face, strongly marked with small-pox, kindled and changed with each vicissitude.  His eyes glowed with the reflected light of battle; his questions were many and intelligent, and it was chiefly these that sent us so often to the map.  But it is of our parting that I keep the strongest sense.  We were to sail on the morrow, and the night had fallen, dark, gusty, and rainy, when we stumbled up the hill to bid farewell to Stanislao.  He had already loaded us with gifts; but more were waiting.  We sat about the table over cigars and green cocoa-nuts; claps of wind blew through the house and extinguished the lamp, which was always instantly relighted with a single match; and these recurrent intervals of darkness were felt as a relief.  For there was something painful and embarrassing in the kindness of that separation.  ’Ah, vous devriez rester ici, mon cher ami!’ cried Stanislao.  ’Vous etes les gens qu’il faut pour les Kanaques; vous etes doux, vous et votre famille; vous seriez obeis dans toutes les iles.’  We had been civil; not always that, my conscience told me, and never anything beyond; and all this to-do is a measure, not of our considerateness, but of the want of it in others.  The rest of the evening, on to Vaekehu’s and back as far as to the pier, Stanislao walked with my arm and sheltered me with his umbrella; and after the boat had put off, we could still distinguish, in the murky darkness, his gestures of farewell.  His words, if there were any, were drowned by the rain and the loud surf.

I have mentioned presents, a vexed question in the South Seas; and one which well illustrates the common, ignorant habit of regarding races in a lump.  In many quarters the Polynesian gives only to receive.  I have visited islands where the population mobbed me for all the world like dogs after the waggon of cat’s-meat; and where the frequent proposition, ‘You my pleni (friend),’ or (with more of pathos) ’You all ‘e same my father,’ must be received with hearty laughter and a shout.  And perhaps everywhere, among the greedy and rapacious, a gift is regarded as a sprat to catch a whale.  It is the habit to give gifts and to receive returns, and such characters, complying with the custom, will look to it nearly that they do not lose.  But