Islanders

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.