Noa Noa | Page 7

other women about her, so to speak, take flight in their turn, and faithfully follow and accompany her. Finally all the men in a single guttural and barbarous cry close the song in a tonic chord.
Sometimes in order to sing or converse they assemble in a sort of communal hut. They always begin with a prayer. An old man first recites it conscientiously, and then all those present take it up like a refrain. Then they sing, or tell humorous stories. The theme of these recitals is very tenuous, almost unseizable. It is the details, broidered into the woof and made subtle by their very na?��vet??, which amuse them.
More rarely, they discourse on serious questions or put forth wise proposals.
One evening I heard, not without surprise, the following:
"In our village," an old man said, "we see here and there houses which have fallen to ruin and shattered walls and rotting, half-open roofs through which the water penetrates when by chance it rains. Why? Every one in the world has the right to shelter. There is lacking neither of wood, nor of leaves wherewith to build the roofs. I propose that we work in common and build spacious and solid huts in place of those which have become uninhabitable. Let us all give a hand to it in turn."
All those present without exception applauded him.--He had said well!
And the motion of the old man was unanimously adopted.
"This is a prudent and good people," I said myself on my return home that evening.
But the next day when I went to obtain information about the beginning of the work determined upon the evening before, I perceived that no one was any longer giving it a thought. The daily life had again taken its usual course, and the huts which the wise counselor had designated remained in their former ruined state.
To my questions they replied with evasive smiles.
Yet the contraction of the brows drew significant lines on these vast dreaming foreheads.
I withdrew with my thoughts full of confusion, and yet with the feeling that I had received an important lesson from my savages. Certainly they did right in applauding the proposal of the old man; perhaps they were equally justified in not carrying out the adopted resolution.
Why work? The gods are there to lavish upon the faithful the good gifts of nature.
"To-morrow?"
"Perhaps!"
And whatever may happen the sun will rise to-morrow as it rose to-day, beneficent and serene.
Is it heedlessness, frivolity, or variableness?
[paragraph continues] Or is it--who knows--the very deepest of philosophy? Beware of luxury! Beware of acquiring the taste and need for it, under the pretext of providing for the morrow...
Life each day became better.
I understand the Maori tongue well enough by now, and it will not be long before I speak it without difficulty.
My neighbors--three of them quite close by, and many more at varying distances from each other--look upon me as one of them.
Under the continual contact with the pebbles my feet have become hardened and used to the ground. My body, almost constantly nude, no longer suffers from the sun.
Civilization is falling from me little by little.
I am beginning to think simply, to feel only very little hatred for my neighbor--rather, to love him.
All the joys--animal and human--of a free life are mine. I have escaped everything that is artificial, conventional, customary. I am entering into the truth, into nature. Having the certitude of a succession of days like this present one, equally free and beautiful, peace descends on me. I develop normally and no longer occupy myself with useless vanities.
I have won a friend.
He came to me of his own accord, and I feel sure here that in his coming to me there was no element of self-interest.
He is one of my neighbors, a very simple and handsome young fellow.
My colored pictures and carvings in wood aroused his curiosity; my replies to his questions have instructed him. Not a day passes that he does not come to watch me paint or carve...
Even after this long time I still take pleasure in remembering the true and real emotions in this true and real nature.
In the evening when I rested from my day's work, we talked. In his character of a wild young savage he asked many questions about European matters, particularly about the things of love, and more than once his questions embarrassed me.
But his replies were even more na?��ve than his questions.
One day T put my tools in his hands and a piece of wood; I wanted him to try to carve. Nonplussed, he looked at me at first in silence, and then returned the wood and tools to me, saying with entire simplicity and sincerity, that I was not like the others, that I could do things which other men were incapable of doing, and that I was useful