Short stories of the southern seas

Abstract

There is a certain monotony, perhaps, about these stories. To some extent this is inevitable. The interest and passions of South Sea Island life are neither numerous nor complex, and action is apt to be rapid and direct. A novelist of that modern school that fills its volumes … by refining upon the shadowy refinements of civilised thought and feeling, would find it hard to ply his trade in the South Seas Island society. His models would always be cutting short in five minutes the hesitations and subtleties that ought to have lasted them through a quarter of a life-time. 1