Life for those who remained in the Samoan home became an impossible thing without him, and so Mrs Stevenson, with her son and daughter, by-and-bye left Vailima, and the home of so much happiness is now falling into ruin, the cleared ground lapsing back to the bush. And perhaps it is best so; without him Vailima is like a body without a soul; and he who so dearly loved nature would hardly have regretted that the place he loved should return to the mother heart of the earth and become once more a solitude—a green place of birds and trees.
CHAPTER XIII
HIS LIFE-WORK
'Art's life, and when we live we suffer and toil.'
—Mrs Barrett Browning.
'A healthful hunger for the great idea,
The beauty and the blessedness of life.'