Page:Letters from America, Brooke, 1916.djvu/215

Rh famous beauty, with the keen intelligence Samoans have if they care, a wonderful dancer, possessed of a glorious singing voice and a perfect knowledge of English. The party was a great success. The princess led her guests afterwards to the flag-staff. Before anyone could stop her, she leapt on to the pole and raced up the sixty feet of it. That also is among the accomplishments of a Samoan princess. She seized the German flag, tore it to pieces, brought it down, and danced on it. So the tale is; and it is probably true. In the villages where I stayed it was amusing how swiftly and completely the children forgot the few words of German the Government sometimes had them taught; while one or two common phrases, &apos;Morgen,' &apos;gut,' etc., were retained as extremely good jokes by the boys and girls, occasions of inextinguishable laughter, through the absurdity of their sound and the very ridiculous Germanness of them....

I wish I were there again. It is a country, and a life, that bind the heart. There is a poem:

I know an island,

Lovely and lost, and half the world away;

And there, 'twixt lowland and highland,