I should have told you about the Club. We have been asked to
try and start a sort of weekly ball for the half-castes and
natives, ourselves to be the only whites; and we consented,
from a very heavy sense of duty, and with not much hope. Two
nights ago we had twenty people up, received them in the
front verandah, entertained them on cake and lemonade, and I
made a speech - embodying our proposals, or conditions, if
you like - for I suppose thirty minutes. No joke to speak to
such an audience, but it is believed I was thoroughly
intelligible. I took the plan of saying everything at least
twice in a different form of words, so that if the one
escaped my hearers, the other might be seized. One white man
came with his wife, and was kept rigorously on the front
verandah below! You see what a sea of troubles this is like
to prove; but it is the only chance - and when it blows up,
it must blow up! I have no more hope in anything than a dead
frog; I go into everything with a composed despair, and don't
mind - just as I always go to sea with the conviction I am to
be drowned, and like it before all other pleasures.
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