Islanders

I

Richard Emil Braun

Richard Emil Braun

The natives here enjoy a delicate

and tense society.

Their upper classes make an art

of conversation

so refined that no Caucasian ever

participates without

making at least one outrageous

faux pas.

Few Europeans, in fact, can manage

even the rudiments

of this language, which consists

of vowels only,

and, although several grammars have been composed

by reputable scholars,

these disagree on every major

point of syntax.

The chieftains are invariably stout:

a proverb says “Fat men must

be sure; doubt and misgivings need

agility.”

The special term for this is rendered as

“complacency” in all

the lexicons, but is in no wise

derogatory.

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