Letters And Sketches From the New Hebrides

meanwhile, as a Drawing-Room, when we have visitors. Our Native servants get so utterly confused, if strangers are sitting in the dining-room, while they are laying the table. The Aniwans call this the Great House, and are perfectly lost when they get inside?four rooms being quite too much for their comprehension ! And, although they saw them being built, they ask in each room, with bewildered faces, whether they are North, South, East, or West ? We sometimes have to take them through several times in a day; and it is genuine fun to watch them ?a perpetual play, without the wickedness of attending theatres! Some of the scenes are truly dramatic.One fellow, the other day, got so fantastically excited, when I set the sewing-machine a-working before him, that he performed a war-dance in the middle of the floor, flung his arms all about, and called lustily for his dead father! We get the real acting here. A skeleton timepiece, under a glass shade, comes in for a very large amount of interest. The path of the Sun was what they called it, after we explained how the hands and figures indicated its course in the heavens. I tried yesterday to explain that it was the Earth, and not the Sun at all, that was going round, but was promptly informed that I was a liar! ! So I won't trouble them any more with my Physical Geography for a bit. They are just about as unripe for it as were the learned Italians, when Galileo propounded his theory, a couple of centuries ago.... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.