Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 October 1895 — Housekeeping in Samoa. [ARTICLE]

Housekeeping in Samoa.

Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson relates many interesting things about Samoan women and Samoan society, and Samoan housekeeping and Samoan clothes, and other things women love to hear about. “Samoan housekeeping isn’t so simple qs it sounds,” says Mrs. Stevenson. “You have to get all your supplies from New Zealand or Australia every month. Think of sending half across the Pacific for a bottle of bluing and a bag of flo,ur, and you’ll have some Idea of the sort of times we have down there when it comes to keeping house. “Of course you grow a lot of things that are good to eat, but they are mostly luxuries. The necessities you have to buy. It takes a native to live on poi and bananas. White people can’t stand that. “The servant problem ? No, we don’t have that. The reason is that we don’t have any servants. We have families. If you want a cook you let your wants be known, and you’ll be besieged with applicants. When you see one you really like you say: ‘Now', if you’ll be a good boy and do so and so’—and then tell him what you expect him to do, don’t you know—‘l’ll let you be in my family, and I will allow you so much a month for spending money.’ “If you called the money you give your ‘family’ for spending money ‘wages’ they would leave you in a body. They are excellent help. They do a great deal of work and do it w.ell, and they are devoted and faithful. But you cannot call them servants or treat them like servants. “It costs money to live in Samoa, no matter what you hear to the contrary. How much? Ah, just about six or seven times as much as it takes to live, here. We don’t have to spend much money on dress there, to be sure; but, when you have to go 1,000 miles to buy a pair of shoes and just as far for a new hat things begin to get complicated.”— San Francisco Examiner. Silas Forman, of Jacksonville, Fla., is a collector of rattlesnakes. He has accumulated twenty-six of the reptiles.