* * * * *
A WARLIKE TALE FROM THE PACIFIC.
(_FRAGMENT FROM THE POSSIBLE DIARY OF A REALISTIC NOVELIST._)
Well, now I think I have got matters pretty straight. The question is,
whether the Baron will accept my last message as chaff, or resent it.
Let me see, how does it read--"It is suggested, for the President's
consideration, that rumours uncorrected or unexplained acquire almost
the force of admitted truth." Quite so--so they do. Let me see--"That
any want of confidence between the governed and the Government must be
hurtful"--well, to us both. Yes! That's all right. So it will! Lastly,
"That the rumours, in their present form, tend to damage the white
races in the native mind, and to influence for the worse the manners
of the Samoans." Now, that _ought_ to fetch him! A wink is as good as
a nod to a blind pig! However, he is quite ass enough to do nothing!
Everybody saying that he is going to blow us all up, himself included!
Why it's enough to make the natives rise and kill every white man in
the place. Still, good idea for a story.
_Later_. The idiot! Instead of promptly denying the facts, he says he
won't have anything to do with us, because "we care so little for the
correctness of the facts we deal with.
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