【英文原著类】Prayers Written At Vailima(维利马# 祈祷).pdf

Prayers Written At Vailima
Prayers Written At
Vailima
Robert Louis Stevenson
1
Prayers Written At Vailima
INTRODUCTION
In every Samoan household the day is closed with prayer and the
singing of hymns. The omission of this sacred duty would indicate, not
only a lack of religious training in the house chief, but a shameless
disregard of all that is reputable in Samoan social life. No doubt, to many,
the evening service is no more than a duty fulfilled. The child who says
his prayer at his mother's knee can have no real conception of the meaning
of the words he lisps so readily, yet he goes to his little bed with a sense of
heavenly protection that he would miss were the prayer forgotten. The
average Samoan is but a larger child in most things, and would lay an
uneasy head on his wooden pillow if he had not joined, even perfunctorily,
in the evening service. With my husband, prayer, the direct appeal, was a
necessity. When he was happy he felt impelled to offer thanks for that
undeserved joy; when in sorrow, or pain, to call for strength to bear what
must be borne.
Vailima lay up some three miles of continual rise from Apia, and more
than half that distance from the nearest village. It was a long way for a
tired man to walk down every evening with the sole purpose of joining in
family worship; and the road through the bush was dark, and, to the
Samoan imagination, beset with supernatural terrors. Wherefore, as soon
as our household had fallen into a regular routine, and the bonds of
Samoan family life began to draw us more closely together, Tusitala felt
the necessity of including our retainers in our evening devotions. I suppose
ours was the only white man's family in all Samoa, except those of the
missionaries, where the day naturally ended with this homely, patriarchal
custom. Not only were the religious scruples of the natives satisfied, but,
what we did not foresee, our own respectability - and incidentally that of
our retain