My Tahiti by Robert Dean Frisbie — Read

Hans Grun had a dollhouse affair of two stories, with five tiny rooms fitted out with German neatness and ingenuity. There was a place for everything. Little cupboards had been built in the corners, above the doors, and under the windows and staircase; there were inventions by Neilsen to keep the windows open and the doors shut; there were homemade tools, a tobacco cutter, a wheelbarrow, a rabbit warren, a duck, fish, and shrimp pool with a fountain and flower-bedded border, a fowl run, a horse pasture, vegetable terraces dug out of the hillside. And in the house were the essential comforts: running water, screened windows, and a home-brew tub. But to me, the felicity of Hans's place was in its absence of radio, electric lights, and such unhomely things. There were plenty of books, however, a fine stove, good kerosene lamps that were always trimmed, comfortable beds, and, more important than all of these, freedom from annoyance.

Hans was an elderly man with the sound and wholesome philosophy of life so common among his people. He was sufficient to himself; and only such a man would have been content to live in such a wild and unfrequented place. Hans was ingenious, as his house testified, taciturn, and a recluse save on the rare days when he kept open house. Then he opened the floodgates of his being, and there was a merry time at Farué.