| 631 | 632 | 633 | 634 | 635 |
| 1 | 314 | 629 | 943 | 1257 |
|
hideous disease is an unspeakable disaster.
My billiard table is stacked up with books relating to the Sandwich
Islands: the walls axe upholstered with scraps of paper penciled with
notes drawn from them. I have saturated myself with knowledge of that
unimaginably beautiful land and that most strange and fascinating
people. And I have begun a story. Its hidden motive will illustrate a
but-little considered fact in human nature; that the religious folly
you are born in you will die in, no matter what apparently reasonabler
religious folly may seem to have taken its place meanwhile, and
abolished and obliterated it. I start Bill Ragsdale at 12 years of age,
and the heroine at 4, in the midst of the ancient idolatrous system,
with its picturesque and amazing customs and superstitions, 3 months
before the arrival of the missionaries and the erection of a shallow
Christianity upon the ruins of the old paganism. Then these two will
become educated Christians, and highly civilized.
And then I will jump 15 years, and do Ragsdale's leper business. When
we came to dramatize, we can draw a deal of matter from the story, all
ready to our hand.
Yrs Ever
MARK.
He never finished the Sandwich Islands story which he and Howells
633
Page
Quick Jump
|