For what is the knot untied in the _Beach of Falesá_? If I mistake not, our interest centres neither in Case's dirty trick of the marriage, nor in his more stiff-jointed trick of the devil-contraptions. The first but helps to construct the problem, the second seems a superfluity. The problem is (and the author puts it before us fair and square), How is Wiltshire a fairly loose moralist with some generosity of heart, going to treat the girl he has wronged? And I am bound to say that as soon as Wiltshire answers that question before the missionary--an excellent scene and most dramatically managed--my interest in the story, which is but halftold at this point, begins to droop. As I said, the "devil-work" chapter strikes me as stiff, and the conclusion but rough-and-tumble. And I feel certain that the story itself is to blame, and neither the scenery nor the persons, being one of those who had as lief Mr. Stevenson spake of the South Seas as of the Hebrides, so that he speak and I listen. Let it be granted that the Polynesian names are a trifle hard to distinguish at first--they are easier than Russian by many degrees--yet the difficulty vanishes as you read the _Song of Rahéro_, or the _Footnote to History_. And if it comes to habits, customs, scenery, etc., I protest a man must be exacting who can find no romance in these while reading Melville's _Typee_. No, the story itself is to blame. But what is the human problem in _The Bottle Imp_? (Imagine Scheherazadé with a human problem!) Nothing less, if you please than the problem of Alcestis--nothing less and even something more; for in this case when the wife has made her great sacrifice of self, it is no fortuitous god but her own husband who wins her release, and at a price no less fearful than she herself has paid. Keawe being in possession of a bottle which must infallibly bring him to hell-flames unless he can dispose of it at a certain price, Kokua his wife by a stratagem purchases the bottle from him, and stands committed to the doom he has escaped. She does her best to hide this from Keawe, but he, by accident discovering the truth, by another stratagem wins back the curse upon his own head, and is only rescued by a _deus ex machinâ_ in the shape of a drunken boatswain.