"He has taken a shameful advantage of my absence. He has not been home since Thursday evening, and his hat is hanging up in the hall.”

"You don't think he has been

On the following day, therefore, Mrs. "You don't mean to say Mr. Quelch Quelch at Lowestoft was surprised to has gone too?" sobbed Mrs. Fladfind on the breakfast table two letters gate. in her Benjamin's handwriting. Her surprise was still greater when, on opening them, she found one to be a graphic account of a visit to the Zoological Gardens on the following Monday. The conclusion was obvious. Either m-m-murdered?" Benjamin had turned prophet, and had somehow got ahead of the almanac, or he was 66 carrying on " in some very underhand manner. Mrs. Quelch decided for the latter alternative, and determined to get to the bottom of the matter at once. She cut a sandwich, put on her bonnet, and grasping her umbrella in a manner which boded no good to any one who stayed her progress, started by the next train for Liverpool Street.

"I'm not afraid of that," replied Mrs. Quelch. "It wouldn't be worth anybody's while. But what has he got on his head? that's what I want to know. Of course, if he's with Mr. Fladgate in some foreign den of iniquity, that accounts for it.”

"Don't foreigners wear hats?" inquired Mrs. Fladgate innocently.

"Not the respectable English sort, I'll be bound," replied Mrs. Quelch. "Some outlandish rubbish, I dare say. But I thought Mr. Fladgate was on his Scotch journey." (Mr. Fladgate, it should be stated, was a traveller in the oil and color line.)

"So he is. I mean, so he ought to

be. In fact, I expected him home today. But now he's in p-p-prison; and I may never see him any m-mo-more." And Mrs. Fladgate wept afresh.

On reaching home, she extracted from the weeping Widger, who had just been spending the last of Benjamin's five shillings, and was far gone in depression and. gin-and-water, that her "good gentleman" had not been home since Thursday night. This was bad enough; but there was still more conclusive evidence that he was up to no good in the shape of his tall hat, which "Stuff and nonsense!" retorted Mrs. hung, a silent accuser, on the last peg in Quelch. "You've only to send the the passage. money they ask for,, and they'll be Having pumped Mrs. Widger till glad enough to get rid of him. But I there was no more (save tears) to be wouldn't hurry; I'd let him wait a bit pumped out of her, Mrs. Quelch, still-you'll see him soon enough, never firmly grasping her umbrella, proceeded fear." next door, on the chance that her neigh- The prophecy was fulfilled sooner bor, Mrs. Fladgate, might be able to than the prophet expected. Scarcely give her some information. She found were the words out of her mouth when Mrs. Fladgate weeping in the parlor a cab was heard to draw up at the door, with an open telegram before her. Be- and a moment later Fladgate himself, a ing a woman who did not stand upon big, jovial man, wearing a white hat ceremony, she read the telegram, which very much on one side, entered the was dated from Dieppe, and ran as fol- room, and threw a bundle of rugs on lows: "Monsieur Flodgate here de- the sofa. tained for to have smuggle cigars. Fine to pay, one hundred franc. Send money, and he will be release."

"Home again, old girl, and glad of it! Mornin', Mrs. Quelch," said the

new-comer.

Mrs. Fladgate gazed at him doubtfully for a moment, and then flung her arms round his neck, ejaculating,

"Oh the men, the men!" ejaculated Mrs. Quelch, as she dropped into an armchair. "They're all alike. First Benjamin, and now Fladgate! I" Saved, saved!" shouldn't wonder if they had gone off together."

"Martha," said Mrs. Quelch reprovingly, "have you no self-respect? Is

this the way you deal with so shameful | name instead of his own. That's about a deception?" Then, turning to the the size of it!"

supposed offender: "So, Mr. Fladgate, you have escaped from your foreign prison."

Foreign how much? Have you both gone dotty, ladies? I've just escaped from a third-class carriage on the London and North-western. The space is limited, but I never heard it called a foreign prison.”

"It is useless to endeavor to deceive us," said Mrs. Quelch sternly. "Look at that telegram, Mr. Fladgate, and deny it if you can. You have been gadding about in some vile foreign place with my misguided husband."

"Oh, Quelch is in it too, is he? Then it must be a bad case. But let's see what we have been up to, for, 'pon my word, I'm quite in the dark at pres

ent."

He held out his hand for the telegram, and read it carefully. "Somebody's been having a lark with you, old lady," he said to his wife. "You know well enough where I've been; my regular northern journey, and nowhere else."

"I don't believe a word of it," said Mrs. Quelch; "you men are all alike; deceivers every one of you."

“But Benjamin doesn't smoke. And how should he come to be at Dieppe ? " "Went for a holiday, I suppose. As for smoking, I shouldn't have thought he was up to it; but with that sat-upon sort of man-begging your pardon, Mrs. Quelch-you never know where he may break out. Worms will turn, you know, and sometimes they take a wrong turning.'

"That's just it. He daren't do anything when you've got your eye on him. When you haven't, perhaps he may, and perhaps he mayn't. The fact is, you hold up his head too tight, and if he jibs now and then, you can't wonder at it."

“You have a very coarse way of putting things, Mr. Fladgate. Mr. Quelch is not a horse, that I am aware of."

"We won't quarrel about the animal, my dear madam, but you may depend upon it my solution's right. A hardened villain, like myself, say, would never have got into such a scrape; but Quelch don't know enough of the world to keep himself out of mischief. They've got him in quod, that's clear, and the best thing you can do is to send the coin and get him out again."

"Send money to those swindling Frenchmen! Never! If Benjamin is in prison, I will fetch him out myself." "You would never risk that dreadful

"Much obliged for your good opinion, Mrs. Quelch. I had no idea Quelch was such a bad lot. But so far as I am concerned, the thing's easily tested. Here is the bill for my bed last night at Carlisle. Now, if I was in Carlisle, and larking about at Dieppe at sea-passage," exclaimed Mrs. Fladgate. the same time, perhaps you'll kindly" And how will you explain how I managed it." language? You don't understand

Mrs. Quelch was staggered, but not French." convinced. "But if-if you were at Carlisle, where is Benjamin, and what does this telegram mean?"

"Not being a wizard, I really can't say. But concerning Quelch, we shall find him, never fear. When did he disappear?"

Mrs. Quelch told her story, not forgetting the mysterious letter.

manage the

"Oh! I shall do very well," said the heroic woman. "They won't talk French to me!"

That same night, a female passenger crossed by the boat from Newhaven to Dieppe. The passage was rough, and the passenger was very sea-sick, but she still sat grimly upright, never for one moment relaxing her grasp on the handle of her silk umbrella. What she went through on landing, how she finally obtained her husband's release,

"I think I see daylight," said Fladgate. "The party who has got into that mess is Quelch, and being frightened out of his wits, he has given my 4220 VOL. LXXXII.

LIVING AGE.

and what explanations passed between ized. Such a day must surely dawn on the re-united pair, must be left to the reader's imagination, for Mrs. Quelch never told the story. Twenty-four hours later, a four-wheeled cab drew up at the Quelches' door, and from it descended, first a stately female, and then a woe-begone little man in a soft felt hat and a red necktie, both sorely crushed and soiled, with a black bag in his hand. "Is there a fire in the kitchen?" asked Mrs. Quelch the moment she set foot in the house. Being assured that there was, she proceeded down the kitchen stairs, Quelch meekly following her. "Now," she said, pointing to the black bag. "Those things!" Benjamin opened the bag, and tremblingly took out the frilled night-dress and the cigars. His wife pointed to the fire, and he meekly laid them on it. "Now that necktie." The necktie followed the cigars. "And that thing;" and the hat crowned the funeral pile.

Now, Benjamin," she said to her trembling spouse, "I forgive you. But if ever again

any one who sees for the first time the glory of the sea which girdles the coral islands of the South Pacific. As the Norddeutscher Lloyd steamship Lübeck steamed through the hundred isles and islets which make up the Tongan group, a day-dream of pure color glowing beneath a tropical sun unfolded itself before our delighted eyes. The low shores covered with graceful cocoanut palm-trees seemed to float, not in a real ocean, but in melted jewels, or in rainbow rivers whose waters flowed into each other, changing every instant, so that a surface at one minute sapphire was at the next of a transparent green, or again of a deep amethyst tending to crimson, or of turquoise blue in a silver setting. The vivid hues were such as we had never seen before save in the tail of a peacock or in the plumage of a humming-bird or bird of paradise; now they were spread before us in waves of splendor, which neither poet nor artist could ever capture or recall. The little toilers whose reefs now destroy ships and now create fresh dwelling-places for man, at least endow the world with a heritage of beauty by building reflectors in the deep, which catch the sunbeams as they fall through the seas and send back visions born of coral, light, and water.

This radiant morning followed a The warning was left unspoken, but stormy passage from Sydney, and it was not needed. Benjamin's one though the trials thereof were much experience has more than satisfied his alleviated by the thoughtfulness of yearning for soft raiment and foreign | Captain Mentz, who resigned to us his travel, and his hats are taller than own cabin in the steadiest part of the ship, the pause at Nukualofa, the neat and pretty capital of Tongatabu, had been no small relief.

ever.

From The Nineteenth Century.
THREE WEEKS IN SAMOA.
I.

Holy Tonga, like many another South Sea island, is engaged in an interesting political and religious drama of its own, the last act of which is not

THE RIVAL MONARCHS. —A NIGHT IN by any means played out; but we had

hours brought us to the harbor of Apia, | it you could watch, passing along the the chief town of Upolu, the principal, shady avenue, pretty Samoan girls and though not the largest, island of the smooth-skinned light - brown youths, Samoan group. Upolu presents a great contrast to Tonga. Though girt with coral reefs, it is itself of volcanic origin, and its lovely hills, some reaching the height of three thousand feet, rise in many places directly from the water's edge. Except in the west coast sounds of New Zealand, I never saw mountains so thickly clothed with trees of every description Many were stately forest kings with dark-green tropical foliage; others bore brilliant flowers on their branches; the variety was endless and, as we soon discovered, the shade delicious. August, the month of our visit, being the winter season in these islands, all the blossoms were not out, but we were told that to stand on a mountain height later in the year, and to gaze on the dense mass of foliage below, was to overlook a gorgeous garden of flowers blooming on the trees.

Apia with its suburbs forms a long, straggling town partially encircling the harbor, the scene of the great hurricane when Captain Kane immortalized himself and the Calliope. The wreck of the German Adler still remains, a melancholy memento of the catastrophe.

with scarlet flowers stuck coquettishly
behind their ears, laughing children and
staid chiefs, white-uniformed soldiers
and neatly garbed municipal police;
while ever and anon a reckless rider
galloped his horse along the hard road,
regardless alike of its legs and of the
probable fate of the passer-by. After
a day or two dedicated to rest and to
making acquaintance with our imme-
diate neighbors and neighborhood, we
went to pay our respects in due form to
his Majesty Malietoa Laupepa, king of
the Samoan Islands. This monarch, a
gentleman dressed in the correct white
linen coat and trousers worn by Euro-
peans in the islands, traces his descent
from the gods and heroes reverenced in
bygone centuries.
gain without undue mental exertion an
accurate idea of the modern history
and present political condition of Samoa
would do well to read Mr. Stevenson's
"Footnote to History," which threads
an almost inextricable maze in an
amusing and intelligible fashion pecul-
iar to himself. Meantime, in order to
introduce the dramatis personce with
whom we made acquaintance, it may be
permitted to retrace rapidly the story
of the land and its inhabitants, with-
out attempting to draw a rigid line be-
tween the end of legend and beginning
of history.

All who wish to

Our kind host, Mr. Bazett Haggard, H.B.M.'s land commissioner, took us off from the Lübeck in the commission boat, painted white and gaily manned with a picked native crew dressed in white turbans and jerseys and scarlet The exact origin of the name Samoa lava-lavas or loin-cloths. A good boat is uncertain. One account says that and a good crew are the first requisites the rocks married the earth and had a for a Samoan sojourn, and we had child called Moa or centre (of the ample opportunity of proving that the earth), and that the country was SaApolima is as seaworthy as she is orna-i.e., sacred-to Moa. The more genermental, and that her men are worthy representatives of the natives whose nautical prowess won for the group the name of Navigators' Islands.

We landed at Matantu, the eastern suburb of Apia, where we took up our abode in Mr. Haggard's straggling twostoried house, effectually sheltered from the tropical sun by a bower of bananas, bread-fruit, candle-nut, and flamboyant trees. The balcony of this house was a splendid post of observation.. From

ally received legend, of which there are several versions, is that the god Lu preserved the fowls during a flood, and that he called the land thus utilized as a poultry-yard Sa-nioa, sacred to moa, moa being the word for fowl in many Pacific languages. The fowls in Samoa are exceedingly noisy, presumably from elation at such divine recognition; but surely Lu has since withdrawn his patronage, for they are the smallest and skinniest creatures of their kind which

I have ever seen or tasted. The prin- "gallantly strong," by, with the aid of cipal deity of the Samoan Pantheon his brother, freeing the Samoans from was Tangaloalani, or Tangaloa of the the Tongans, who had come over and Heavens. He had a son called Pilibuu, conquered the islands. who came down from heaven to select a place of residence. He came to Manua, at the eastern extremity of the group, and there planted the first kava and sugarcane. Finding, however, that the place was too small for him, he left it, and landed on the island of Tutuila. Here he remained for a few days working at a fishing-net, but when he had finished he found that he had no space on the island on which to spread it out to its full extent. So he continued his voyage of discovery till he reached Upolu; here he settled down and married Sinaletavae, daughter of the king of A'ana. By her he had four sons, Tua, Sanga, Ana, and Tolufale. When the time came for him to die he made his will as follows: "To Tua, whose name he changed to Atua, he confided the care of the plantations. Sanga, henceforward Tuamasanga, received the walking-stick and fue or fly-whisk, that he might "do the talking."

Ana became A'ana with the spear and club as principal fightingman; and Tolufale was to live on the island of Manono with charge of the war-canoes of the nation.

Samoa continued as a collection of village communities governed by chiefs, and by superior chiefs, commonly called kings, and presumably descended from the four sons of Pilibuu, till long after its discovery by Bougainville and La Pérouse in the latter half of last century. Shortly before our present queen began her reign, missionaries of the Wesleyan Connexion and of the London Missionary Society took up their abode on the islands, which soon became known as an advantageous station for whaling vessels, and were, moreover, a resort for white traders, runaway convicts from New South Wales, and beachcombers, or casuals of doubtful. reputation. Some of the traders, notably those who later on came to be described as the squires of Savaii (the largest island of the group), established themselves in good houses, and were renowned throughout the South Seas for their hospitality; but the fame of the "men of the beach" of Apia hardly stood high, and many queer stories are told of the modern buccaneers and adventurers who were precursors of the very respectable community which now inhabits the Samoan capital.

Some twenty years ago an American company purchased valuable property in the islands, and the United States government acquired the right, which it still retains, to use the harbor of PangoPango,1 on the island of Tutuila, as a naval station. Soon afterwards Stein

To all he gave this excellent advice: "When you wish to fight, fight; when you wish to work, work; when you wish to talk, talk." The first and third injunctions have been strictly observed down to the present day. Three of the chief provinces bear the names of Atua, A'ana, and Tuamasanga, and though it is rumored that Atua somewhat re-berger, an American, who was sent out sented its agricultural lot, it is still by his government as a travelling sciregarded as a good place for planta- entist, represented himself to the Sations. Malietoa Laupepa is said to be moans as a government envoy. Having descended from the kings of A'ana. had the good fortune to obtain funds Malietoa is one of the five "kingly from the great German firm of Goddenames assigned by different prov-froy, he acquired considerable influence inces to such heirs as they consider in the islands. He acknowledged the have a right to bear them. In order to late Malietoa as supreme king, and drew ensure dominion over the whole coun- up a constitution by which an Upper try the five names ought to be borne by one individual, a consummation rather to be desired than expected. The first Malietoa won his title, which means

1 Pago-Pago. A softened n is sounded, though words. In these pages such words are spelt as pronot commonly written, between a and g in Samoan

nounced.