Quotation from: The Cruise of the Snark

Written by: Jack London


While on the way to the cutter we met the only white man on Tahaa,
and of all men, George Lufkin, a native of New England! Eighty-six
years of age he was, sixty-odd of which, he said, he had spent in
the Society Islands, with occasional absences, such as the gold rush
to Eldorado in 'forty-nine and a short period of ranching in
California near Tulare. Given no more than three months by the
doctors to live, he had returned to his South Seas and lived to
eighty-six and to chuckle over the doctors aforesaid, who were all
in their graves. Fee-fee he had, which is the native for
elephantiasis and which is pronounced fay-fay. A quarter of a
century before, the disease had fastened upon him, and it would
remain with him until he died. We asked him about kith and kin.
Beside him sat a sprightly damsel of sixty, his daughter. "She is
all I have," he murmured plaintively, "and she has no children
living."

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Old Dominion University CS Dept
Designed by Joan A. Smith for the CRATE project
Created: 2007-2-22T12:35:29Z
Part of the CratePreservation Project
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Part of a series of experiments in web preservation under the direction of Michael L. Nelson, Ph.D.