第23章 A SAMOAN MEMORIAL OF R.L.STEVENSON(2)

owing no man anything - instead of going home to their own places and families, they came to me.They offered to do this work (to make this road) for me as a free gift, without hire, without supplies, and I was tempted at first to refuse their offer.I knew the country to be poor; I knew famine threatening; I knew their families long disorganised for want of supervision.Yet I accepted, because I thought the lesson of that road might be more useful to Samoa than a thousand bread-fruit trees, and because to myself it was an exquisite pleasure to receive that which was so handsomely offered.It is now done; you have trod it to-day in coming hither.It has been made for me by chiefs; some of them old, some sick, all newly delivered from a harassing confinement, and in spite of weather unusually hot and insalubrious.I have seen these chiefs labour valiantly with their own hands upon the work, and I have set up over it, now that it is finished the name of 'The Road of Gratitude' (the road of loving hearts), and the names of those that built it.'In perpetuam memoriam,' we say, and speak idly.At least, as long as my own life shall be spared it shall be here perpetuated; partly for my pleasure and in my gratitude; partly for others continually to publish the lesson of this road."

And turning to the chiefs, Mr Stevenson said:

"I will tell you, chiefs, that when I saw you working on that road, my heart grew warm; not with gratitude only, but with hope.It seemed to me that I read the promise of something good for Samoa;

it seemed to me as I looked at you that you were a company of warriors in a battle, fighting for the defence of our common country against all aggression.For there is a time to fight and a time to dig.You Samoans may fight, you may conquer twenty times, and thirty times, and all will be in vain.There is but one way to defend Samoa.Hear it, before it is too late.It is to make roads and gardens, and care for your trees, and sell their produce wisely; and, in one word, to occupy and use your country.If you do not, others will....

"I love Samoa and her people.I love the land.I have chosen it to be my home while I live, and my grave after I am dead, and I love the people, and have chosen them to be my people, to live and die with.And I see that the day is come now of the great battle;

of the great and the last opportunity by which it shall be decided whether you are to pass away like those other races of which I have been speaking, or to stand fast and have your children living on and honouring your memory in the land you received of your fathers."

Mr James H.Mulligan, U.S.Consul, told of the feast of Thanksgiving Day on the 29th November prior to Mr Stevenson's death, and how at great pains he had procured for it the necessary turkey, and how Mrs Stevenson had found a fair substitute for the pudding.In the course of his speech in reply to an unexpected proposal of "The Host," Mr Stevenson said:

"There on my right sits she who has but lately from our own loved native land come back to me - she to whom, with no lessening of affection to those others to whom I cling, I love better than all the world besides - my mother.From the opposite end of the table, my wife, who has been all in all to me, when the days were very dark, looks to-night into my eyes - while we have both grown a bit older - with undiminished and undiminishing affection.

"Childless, yet on either side of me sits that good woman, my daughter, and the stalwart man, my son, and both have been and are more than son and daughter to me, and have brought into my life mirth and beauty.Nor is this all.There sits the bright boy dear to my heart, full of the flow and the spirits of boyhood, so that I can even know that for a time at least we have still the voice of a child in the house."