The third he came out fairly from
his intrenchments, praised my sketch, and with the
IMPROMPTU cordiality of artists carried me into his
apartment; where I sat presently in the midst of a
museum of strange objects--paddles, and battle-clubs,
and baskets, rough-hewn stone images, ornaments of
threaded shell, cocoa-nut bowls, snowy cocoa-nut
plumes--evidences and examples of another earth,
another climate, another race, and another (if a ruder)
culture. Nor did these objects lack a fitting
commentary in the conversation of my new acquaintance.
Doubtless you have read his book. You know already how
he tramped and starved, and had so fine a profit of
living in his days among the islands; and meeting him
as I did, one artist with another, after months of
offices and picnics, you can imagine with what charm he
would speak, and with what pleasure I would hear. It
was in such talks, which we were both eager to repeat,
that I first heard the names--first fell under the
spell--of the islands; and it was from one of the first
of them that I returned (a happy man) with "Omoo" under
one arm, and my friend's own adventures under the
other.
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