Page:An account of the natives of the Tonga Islands.djvu/62

liv period he has been situated in the counting-house of a respectable merchant in the city, where he is still. His health is by no means good: this and other circumstances have occasioned the work several times to be suspended for above two months together; for, as I have before stated, not a single page of it has been written, even from his own memoranda, without his presence, which, in general, I could only have in the evening, or at night, after the hours of business, and his health did not always admit of such additional employment of his attention. He resides at No. 5, Edward's-place, Hackney-road.

In regard to my own labour in the present work I shall say but little. I am sensible there are many faults, and though I am by no means disposed to trouble the reader with unseasonable apologies, I beg leave to state, that the following pages were not written in the order they were destined to assume, but at very uncertain and irregular periods, as the result of various conversations; that sometimes the vocabulary, at other times the narrative