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Melville, Herman

"Typee"

"A very pleasant place," Kory-Kory said it was; "but, after all, not much pleasanter, he thought, than Typee." "Did he not, then," I asked him, wish to accompany the warrior?" "Oh, no; he was very happy where he was; but supposed that some time or other he would go in his own canoe."


? ? ? ? Thus far, I think, I clearly comprehended Kory-Kory. But there was a singular expression he made use of at the time, enforced by as singular a gesture, the meaning of which I would have given much to penetrate. I am inclined to believe it must have been a proverb he uttered; for I afterwards heard him repeat the same words several times, and in what appeared to me to be a somewhat similar sense. Indeed, Kory-Kory had a great variety of short, smart-sounding sentences, with which he frequently enlivened his discourse; and he introduced them with an air which plainly intimated, that, in his opinion, they settled the matter in question, whatever it might be.


? ? ? ? Could it have been, then, that when I asked him whether he desired to go to this heaven of bread-fruit, cocoa-nuts, and young ladies, which he had been describing, he answered by saying something equivalent to our old adage "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush!"- if he did, Kory-Kory was a discreet and sensible fellow, and I cannot sufficiently admire his shrewdness.


? ? ? ? Whenever, in the course of my rambles through the valley, I happened to be near the chief's mausoleum, I always turned aside to visit it.


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