GIFT OF MICHAEL REESE Carles ll/arru open your mouth too wide you can't shut it ;ii;;un without getting under the lee of something the wind blows so hard. But UP THE VALE OF NUUANU 33 who wants to talk when he is perched on the backbone of an island, with fifteen hundred feet of space beneath him, and the birds swimming in it like winged fish in a transpar- ent sea? And oh, the silent land beyond the heights, with -the long, long, winding, rocky stairway leading down into it. No sound ever comes from that beautiful land, not even from the marvelously blue sea, that noiselessly piles its breakers upon the shore like swan's-down. A great mountain wall divides this side of the island of Oahu into about equal parts. It is half in sunshine and half in shade; on the one hand is the metropolis, on the other semi- solitude and peace. Peace, a visible, tangible peace, with winding roads in it, and patches of bright green sugar-cane, and wee villages and palm trees upon the distant shore. It is picturesque in form, delicious in color. Some- thing to look at in awe and wonderment, and to turn from at last with a doubt as to its reality. It is all precisely as you left it, even to the microscopic pilgrims toiling up the long stair- way fugitives from the mysterious land, who 34 HAWAIIAN LIFE we are surprised to find resemble us not a lit- tle. While some come back to us, others are going thither passing down into the silence and the serenity of the enchanting distance. And so this little world wags on with an easy acquiescence, unchangeable and unchanged, yesterday, to-day, and forever. Your ship lay in the harbor a harbor that from the Pali reminds one of the Vesuvian Bay and you hurried away to your Egypt, leav- ing your heart here, as you protested. "A place to die in," was your last word to me; "I will return and give up the ghost in peace." A place to live in, O prober of pyramids! Having unriddled the Sphinx, is it not about time to think of taking life leisurely, even unto the end? . VII. AFLOAT. IN HONOLULU HARBOR. DELUDED NAVIGATOR: I find the log of your canoe club uneventful. What shall it profit a yachtsman though he gain a whole length in a race from Alaska to Mexico, and lose his own dinner on the high seas? Your canoeist is burdened with disadvantages in due proportion. The boatmen that 'buffet the windy waves of San Francisco Bay are for the most part in pickle; and I have not yet forgotten the regattas where the lads were goose-fleshed, and the lasses, "for all their feathers, were a-cold." It likes me not; I have no stomach for the nautical as exempli- fied in your summer cruising on raw and gusty Saturdays; and while I beg pardon of the Chispa, the Viva, and the Consuelo, of pleas- ant memory, I must confess it was nothing to me when the fleet went into winter quarters 35 36 HAWAIIAN LIFE on some obscure mud-flat where the chill rip- ples slapped it under the bows until the spring tides came in. . Our spirits rise with the full moon in this latitude, and we go down to the sea in pairs, with a guitar balanced upon the shoulder. There is a dock whereon boats lie keel upward in the moonlight; where the air is pregnant with the odor of imported lumber and of oakum and of mellow pitch. A few broad, easy steps lead down to the water, on which a skiff is floating, apparently in mid-air, for it seems scarcely to touch the water; about us tower the silhouettes of ships, looking very large indeed, and with tall masts that almost touch the stars. There is not a sound; there is no one vis- ible; we seem to have suddenly become a part of a picture which was incomplete until we entered. Some one strums a guitar; im- mediately a boatman is materialized out of a shadow; he draws in the skiff as one would draw a water-lily by the stem; hardly a word is spoken; it is like a fairy interlude wherein everything is done to slow music for with a guitar in hand, it is next to impossible to keep AFLOAT 37 from fondling the strings. In a moment we have cast off and are drifting away in space over the shadow of a filmy cloud wherein the stars glimmer like pearls. There are two belles sharing the helm be- tween them ; there are two benedicts who pull languidly at the oars; and there are two amidships, one who cheers the crew with song, the other, your confrere, who silently bewails your absence, for a poet alone is all that is necessary to perfect our happiness, and you know I divorced the muse long since. The world no longer wags for us; we ex- plore shadowy inlets, visit remote shores, and never cease to wonder at the ease arid sud- denness with which we reach these far-away lands; it is as if our bark were magical, and we all under a spell. We discover coral shoals and are caught sometimes in the unex- pected antlers of the coral for we are ad- venturers without chart or compass. We look over the side of our bark to see how ghostly the under world is, and sometimes to exclaim at the colorless beauty of those sea- gardens, where the fish feed and fan them- selves with transparent, quivering fins. 38 HAWAIIAN LIFE We drift out toward the great deep, where it falls upon the reef in clouds of diamond dust, and there we are for the first time con- scious of the long-drawn suspiration of the sea, and begin to realize a sense of its terrible reserve-power, made manifest in the bilge swell that rolls on from horizon to horizon without once breaking; we imagine ourselves cast away in mid-ocean, prostrated by famine and thirst, and with the shadow of impending death hovering over us. We watch each bil- low as it bears down upon us and lifts us very gently, slipping us over its shoulder and let- ting us slide down its glossy back; there is something intoxicating in the sense of light- ness that possesses us; we are no longer sub- ject to the laws of gravitation; we soar on the wings of the morning. It is growing late, or rather early, for the serene night has known no flaw since we em- barked unnumbered hours ago; we pull up under the little lighthouse, that seems to have waded out into the water on stilts and got stuck there, and we wonder what manner of man inhabits it. It is the quaintest little lighthouse in the world, and seems capable AFLOAT 39 of being pulled out in all directions, as if it were a conjurer's box; it has balconies and dormer-roofs and adjustable compartments, and is as fantastic as a Chinese bird-cage, in fair weather; but it can shut itself up turtle fashion in case of necessity, and, as self pres- ervation is a primal law, to this hour I am not sure that it does not sink out of sight, like the nautilus, when the winds are foul. We touch at the King's boathouse, speak the royal yacht in a whisper, for she seems to be asleep upon the water; we run under the marine railway how like a stranded leviathan she looks, stripped down to the bone and with the low hanging moon shining slantwise through her ribs! We think how, not very many years ago, the harbor was packed so full of Arctic whalers that one could pass the length and breadth of it by leaping from deck to deck but this was before the steam whaler and the explosive harpoon had knocked the bottom out of Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, and New Bedford. We think also of another night when we were afloat in these still waters, and off yonder a Japanese war-ship lay at an- chor; while we were watching her and listen- 40 HAWAIIAN LIFE ing to the music that was wafted from ship and shore, a swarm of diminutive sailors sprang into the rigging, each with a light in his hand; they ran like sprites, those sailor boys, to the peak and the tips of the spars, and the bulwarks were alive with them, and then, almost before we knew it, the ship-of- war was as gorgeous as a tiger-lily, while she floated in a sea as red as wine. It was the feast of lanterns, and all too soon the lights burned out, and she that was superbly beau- tiful disappeared like a phantom ship in the darkest night of the season. In this mood we say good-night to the old wreck on the reef there is nothing but the spine left now and good-night to the battered hulk that crept into the harbor after a gale had torn her masts out by the roots and shaken her screws loose, and spread her tim- bers like the sticks of a fan but now she is at rest. Then we look again and again upon the misty mountains, the shadowy valleys, and the shining shores, and we think how the in- visible world that the sweet-souled and pa- tient blind dwell in must be like this; a world wherein there is no glare of day, but which AFLOAT 41 is always slumbering in a twilight inexpressibly serene and of an unfading beauty. O poet! you who make your "Ballads of the Bay," and get paid for them, what do you know of all this, and, not knowing, what do you care? But every man to his taste; and as for us, there are sandwiches as thin as wafers, a salad and mulled wine awaiting us up the valley. Let us go hence. The Kid, who lately joined us in a revery, has once more turned his forehead to the stars and melodiously salutes them; our boatman is growing gray upon the shore; we turn our prow homeward, and with a few vigorous strokes, that flutter the phosphorescent fire- flies of the sea, we come in with the tide of song VIII. ASHORE. HONOLULU, H, I. CELLOW-STUDENT: In the days when we used to lounge among the shipping and hide on the sunny side of a bale of fragrant hay, smoking the surreptitious cigarette with what horror we saw that the smoke thereof was likely to betray us I believe we were never so happy as when by some fortunate chance we found ourselves on the forecastle of a bark just in from Tahiti or the Sandwich Islands, and heard the dark-skinned sailors talking together in an unknown tongue. A faint odor of spices prevailed there, and the shells and trinkets the sailors gave us were long preserved in our juvenile cabinets; but we have each of us, in our time, played many parts; and now, insignificant as we are, it takes both Occident and Orient to hold us. 42 ASHORE 43 While you are facing the footlights, and, no doubt, getting many a well-earned round of applause, I saunter among the docks in the hot sunshine of the antipodes, scenting every- thing under heaven, from sugar to sardines. There is the fish market on the one hand and the marine railway, with its margin of mud flats, on the other, and between the two stretch the quarter-deck awnings, under which it is a luxury to lounge. It may be that the small-fry of the inter-island fleet are not pict- uresque, save when their white sails glimmer in a distant calm, but there is always a sug- gestion of repose about them as they lie at the docks with groups of languishing natives wilt- ing in the vicinity; and there is likewise much gossip and laughter mingling with the odor of Hawaiian tobacco and cocoanut-oil; as for the crews of these craft, they seem to be play- ing at work, and the mercantile marine in our tranquil harbor reminds one of the boat-sail- ing on summer Saturdays when we were boys together. Little sails steal in and out of the reef-pas- sage like pretty toys; toy steamers puff to and fro between the islands, and the most 44 HAWAIIAN LIFE serious business is transacted as if it were half in fun; this charming illusion is heightened when we discover that the really big ships don't cross the harbor bar at all, but anchor beyond the reef in blue water. As for the old-time whalers, now fast going out of date, once in a while one of them appears on the horizon and for two or three days she will drift back and forth, with all sail set, and then disappear, like a veritable "Flying Dutchman"; the captain fears to trust his tars within reach of our native sirens, and so trans- acts his business at long range and departs. Don't imagine that anything is lost in what may seem to you like grown-up sport I mean the affable business relations which we sus- tain with ease. A nomadic population swarms upon the deck of every outgoing and incom- ing boat; the air is sweetened with sugar and spice and all that's nice; and there are times when the docks are so crowded that the latest arrivals have to bide their time in mid-stream, turn and turn about, which ought to be a great comfort to them after having wrestled with wind and wave for two or three weeks, or even months, possibly. At intervals the ASHORE 45 missionary packet Morning Star is with us, and then we go down to bargain for pink coral and quaintly woven South Sea fans; or some vessel arrives from the Tropic of Capricorn, freighted with half- naked savages, who look like the pictures of cannibals in obsolete geographies. These tattooed strangers stay for a while on the plantations, and then they are shipped home again, full of half-formed new ideas, and with more or less powder and shot in their carpet-sacks; they even acquire a taste for bric-a-brac, and some of them in- vest their little all in an assortment of cheap mirrors, dolls, and light articles of kitchen furniture, most of which will probably be worn as ornaments on state occasions in those bright little isles of which we read. Oh, but you should watch one of our barks laden and ready for sea, her bow swung out into the stream and pointing toward the channel, her stern still fast to the dock, her vast canvas set and swelling in the breeze. She seems to be straining every nerve and re- joicing as a strong man to run a race. Every- thing is in readiness, and the cables, that seem upon the point of parting, are suddenly loosed 46 HAWAIIAN LIFE and cast off; with an almost perceptible thrill of joy she floats swiftly away, and is blown down between the amber tinted shallows like a wild swan fleeing from her nest among the reeds. Friends took their last look across the widening gulf; the silent tear is shed, the fluttering handkerchiefs are pressed to the dimmed eyes, and when business which was suspended for a moment in the vicinity is resumed again, there comes a sense of loneli- ness that sometimes lasts long after the less- ening sail has dropped like a star beyond the vague horizon. The departure of the steamer Likfe-like of old, and of the Kinau of more recent date, on Tuesday at 4 P. M., is sure to call forth more or less emotion; each usually has a crowded passenger list with a very large proportion of Hawaiians and though the in- ter-island voyage is an affair of hours, not days or weeks, parting is such sweet sorrow that many of us go down to visit the little steamer and to listen to the sobbing of the sympathetic sea. The blue-blooded whites shake hands and wave a light adieu; but the natives, male and female, fall upon one ASHORE 47 another's necks and weep copiously in their best clothes. This display of emotion is highly dramatic, because it is genuine; brief grief is bound to be genuine as long as it lasts -it doesn't have time to be anything else; it is demonstrative and picturesque, and for the most part utterly unconscious, yet all the while the deck and the dock are crowded with interested spectators, who regard it as a pa- thetic or amusing spectacle, according to their point of view. Certainly it is a spectacle, this Tuesday paroxysm; it is brilliant with color, for the emotional victims are led to the sacri- fice wreathed with flowers; then there are fruit offerings without stint, and drink offerings on the sly, and smoke offerings in stumpy pipes that pass from mouth to mouth through a constantly increasing circle of acquaintances, and when the Like-like or the Kinau is finally well out in the stream, and the belated last man, who cast himself scornfully into a skiff, is now being pulled through a port-hole with considerable lack of discretion, we all step townward, for the curtain has been rung down on the perturbed sensibilities and the consoling hour of dinner is at hand. IX. A SABBATICAL MATINEE. HONOLULU, H. I. OERR PROFESSOR: You are a little too lit- eral. In the first place, Emma Square is in reality an oblong; in the second place, the seventh day, being "the Sabbath of the Lord thy God, in which thou shalt do no labor," etc., etc., we keep the shops open till 2 p. M., or even later, and when it is not the busiest of days, which it sometimes is, we go out to the cricket match on the plains or attend the matinee concert, alfresco, free, gratis, for noth- ing. In short, we break all of the ten com- mandments, or nearly all of them, just as regularly and religiously as they are broken throughout the Christian world. Of course, on Sunday we are at church; there is nowhere else to go on Sunday, and it is well to observe the first day of the week, though we break the seventh, which is the Sabbath, into ten thou- sand fragments. 48 A SABBATICAL MATINEE 49 There are turnstiles at the four corners of Emma Square; they are a kind of patent church to which the just and the unjust alike resign themselves and are pumped out on the other side without serious damage. The util- ity of the machine reminds one of the trap doors that block the exits and entrances at popular places of amusement in more civilized communities. Paths, cushioned with volcanic sand, wind in and out among trees and flower- ing shrubs, and all that pertains to this favor- ite resort, from the kiosque in the center to the long hard benches that face it on every hand, is suggestive of the easy familiarity of social life in the tropics. Hither come the grave, the gay, the lively, the severe; the British admiral is not too admirable to meet his crew on the dead level of Emma Square; nor is the gamin too independent to return the royal salute with some pomposity; even the soli- tary local celebrity, "the dandy," the only in- digenous dude, now on his last legs, some- times looks in upon us with undimmed eye- glass, albeit his eyes are nearly sightless. The streets that surround the square are lined with vehicles on concert days and even- 50 HAWAIIAN LIFE ings; at least one princess is a regular attend- ant at the Saturday matinee, and not infre- quently two or more lean from their carriages, dividing their attention between the music and the "mashers"; the King drives here oc- casionally, pausing in his deliberate circuit of the square to chat with friends. There are pony phaetons driven by pretty girls, and gay riding parties, and solitary horsemen doing the statuesque in stirrups, and a proper propor- tion of young gentleman loungers, who stroll about in tennis suits; they snatch a few mo- ments from the battlefield to refresh them- selves with music; and these highly decorative youths are observed to distribute their com- pliments with judicious impartiality. Emma Square at such a time is a breathing spot for the business man, a playground for the indifferent children of the earth, a place of rest and relaxation for eyery one who lives within reach of it- It is the parade ground of the middies, and the bare feet of the urchin tread the same soil with French gaiters and Oxford-ties. What though the rain sifts down out of the cloudless sky? The umbrella tree is at hand, and the India-rubber, and A SABBATICAL MATINEE 51 there is ever the broad banana leaf, under whose silken canopy Paul and Virginia found shelter. Oh marvelous rain, that powders one with- out wetting him! Oh marvelous rainbow, that stretches its airy arch against a heaven of bril- liant blue! Oh marvelous green half-acre, so fresh, so fair, so flowery, wherein the Sab- batical matinee is made mirthful; wherein the moonlight nights are doubly melodious, where the melody is lamplit when the moon has hid- den her face; and where at no time or sea- son, and under no circumstances whatever, is it forbidden to walk upon the grass! .... X. A POI-FEED. HAWAIIAN HOTEL, HONOLULU, H. I. A IKANE: It happened in Number 500, the makua cottage in the hotel grounds that must be forever associated with the memory of the Kohala boys. The Kohala boys were not present on the occasion of which I write; they had withdraw^ to Kohala for repairs, and "Number 500" was ours for the time being. All the morning a carriage had been rolling to and fro, actively engaged in facilitating the arrangements for a poi-feed. There were fish of the rarest description to be captured, fresh from the net, at three o'clock A. M. ; these were to be swathed in succulent leaves and cooked in mysterious ways. Fowls likewise were to be procured; and a piglet, done to death and as delicate in texture as a new born babe. There was a punch-bowl, and a bath- 52 A POI-FEED 53 tub full of ice-water, wherein was sunk many a bottle of the choicest liquids that ever enriched our house of customs. All this took time and a carriage, and it was twilight before we sat in a big circle on the floor and feasted our hungry eyes. Fish, raw and cooked, were served in nests of leaves; flesh and fowl, snow-flaky and deli- cious beyond conception; and such seaweed salad as only mermaids and Hawaiians know how to make ; powdered kukui-nuts for con- diment, and crystals of rock salt; over all, and round about all, flowers and ferns were strewed in rich profusion; wreaths were upon our necks and brows; we were bacchanalians in a decorative art sense, and moreover there was neither knife nor fork to mar our pleasure, nor prude, nor shrew, nor prying eye, nor anything but endless appetite and the very best of good fellowship. The guitars were not silent, nor were the voices hushed; and when, weary of the feast, we sank back upon downy pillows and felt like silken Sybarites, there was one who broke into a barbaric chant, and with much suggestive gesticulation, danced from the knees up until we cried "Enough!" 54 HAWAIIAN LIFE Then we ate again, and yet again, and per- chance dozed at intervals, for the resources of the poi-feed are inexhaustible, and it was not until we had each and all had a fling at the inimitable Hula-Kui and, alas! for the most part covered ourselves with confusion not unmixed with poi that we separated with much adieu. The skeleton at that feast was composed almost entirely of fish-bones; not until the day following did we know one regret. But there is a balm in Gilead, Aikanc! You must know this from experience. It is as soft as oil; it is as mild as camel's-milk; it is more soothing than a lullaby; not myrrh, nor hyssop, nor all the perfumes of Arabia, can pick a fellow up like one of these. I refer need I name it? to the poi-cocktail Mothers use it, medicinally; children, the na- tive and the acclimated, cry for it habitually ; without it, or rather without its principal in- gredient, the gentle Hawaiian would pass like a small cloud from the face of the earth and the sea. You need not ask your grocer for it; he knows nothing of its many virtues; you must come hitherward to seek it, for it is to be taken A POI-FEED 55 on the spot and taken after you have been well shaken for instance, after a poi-feed like the one above referred to. It will smoothe your ruffled plumage; it will restore your soul; it will deliver you from limbo, and fill you with a great, an unutterable peace, in re- turn for which ten thousand thousand thanks were poor indeed. You will thrive under its influence; you will grow charitable and philosophical; and it is not unlikely that while contemplating the flourishing condition of the retired American missionary, combined with the efficacy of the poi-cocktail, you will generously and freely, if not emphatically, acknowledge that the nation has not been converted in vain. XL KAPENA. HONOLULU, H. I. CTRONG SWIMMER: In your agony of goose- *P flesh and chills at the baths of Alameda or Monterey, forget not the sweet pool of Kapena. It may be said of us in these islands that we are never out of sight of the sea, and to most of us its sound is ever audible; but there is a vale hidden among the hills that wooes us from the shore, for it is within easy walking distance of the capital, and in the heart of it is a deep pool fed by a living stream; it is Kapena. There, removed from the convocation of political worms, one may angle without bait, taking the flame-flecked goldfish by the hand- ful; or, weary of this dalliance, bask upon beds of mimosa, stripped to the natural buff or old gold or bronze, as the case may be. The sensitive plant is all that recoils at our KAPENA 57 state, for we are under the shoulders of a high hill, and heights hem us in on every side; moreover, the approach to this famous bath is so delusive that a stranger might easily thread the path in search of the swimming- pool and turn back before he has sighted it; the way is not steep, but it is thorny, and the stream that it follows, which brawls among rocks and rushes, has so many tempting basins that a swimmer might easily fall by the way- side. Moreover, the points of the hills fit in and in, like hands that have been half un- clasped, and though the diminutive cascades are musical and the gigantic cacti formidable, and the avenue of lauhala that weird tree, with its roots in the air and the trail of its leaves like knots of yard-long, gray-green rib- bon though the lauhala avenue is unique, there is, as you well know, a chance of the stranger losing heart at last, and not placing his foot within the gates of Kapena. I do not claim for it a wide range of color; nor has it .any feature that is remarkable in form; it is merely a stream tumbling between bowlders into a placid sheet of not particu- larly clear water. On one side is a projecting 58 HAWAIIAN LIFE cliff bearded with shadows; on the other a steep slope with ferns and creepers. Above the waterfall one catches a glimpse of distant hills, on which the sun seems always to be shining. Below, the view is limited. The descending path follows the outlet under one of the rocky heights and soon is lost to view. There is really very little to distinguish the place from any of the thousand and one bath- ing haunts of the Hawaiians, but its associa- tions are very dear to the people; for the sol- itary cocoa palm that leans from the bank of Kapena has outlived several amphibious generations, and it will probably look just as it looks to-day a little ragged and weather- worn, and awfully lonesome for amphibious generations to come. It is when the sun is hottest and a half-hol- iday that Kapena awakens; soothed by the lul- laby of its own waters, it often sleeps; its palm is a slumberous palm at all times, for it no doubt prefers to dream of the days when the nation was heroic and when its heroes came hither to refresh themselves did you never lie there a-dreaming in the silence and the summer sunshine, a-dreaming with one KAPENA 59 eye open, if, peradventure, an angel might trouble the pool? At times Kapena is filled with swimmers: they spend hours in the water and upon the banks; brown, sleek, glossy fellows sunning themselves like seals upon the rocks; running, romping, wrestling, diving to see who shall stay longest under water, or climbing to the top of the cliff and leaping off an exhibition not only of daring but of exceeding grace. Who of us will forget the seasons we have spent there when the rocks rang with musical laughter? when the shores were peopled by water-nymphs? when the bronze cupids ate madly of rare-ripe watermelon and drank deeply of ginger-pop? when the sages were boys again, and the boys were imps, and Kapena w.as beaten to a froth with the frantic gambols of the innocents? Why do I remind you of all this if you do not see again, while you read, what I see whenever I get the chance to? If you don't remember that the native modesty of the native nude is so convincing it requires no apology for the absence of every- thing else? Do you not recall that brilliant tableau of the flower of Hawaii, plump as a 60 HAWAIIAN LIFE mango, graceful as a bamboo-wand, poised upon the dreadful summit of the cliff, ready to plunge like a shooting star into the depths below? He is about to dive through two elements, rose-tinted air and amber-tinted water out of the sunset into the dark! All eyes are upon him, for the beauty of his flight is unparalleled, and as he poises for a moment upon the extremest verge of the abyss in an attitude that might quicken the soul of a sculptor, he seems to chant, in the words of the revised Psalmist: "Wash me, and I shall be browner than soap!" XII. THE COLONIAL TRANSIT. HAWAIIAN HOTEL, HONOLULU, H. I. IV/l ISERABLE AMERICAN: Do you realize in * what low esteem you are held by your Colonial cousin? It is true that he conde- scends to pass through your great country on his way to the diminutive mother-land; but it may be that the cholera in Eygpt or the war in Africa compels this condescension, and in most cases you will please regard it as compulsory patronage. The Colonist at home is doubtless a very proper fellow, being one with all things antipodean; but the Col- onist abroad is insulated the pelican of the wilderness not more so. And while he is still swollen with Austral pride, he touches our shore and humbles us in the dust. Of course you will not comprehend this, for the Colonist, as you know if indeed you know him at all is an angular nonentity, 61 62 HAWAIIAN LIFE tipped with a cork-helmet and with a field- glass on his hip; or he is a perfectly round and well-fed, if not over-fed, person, whose face seems to have had all expression scrubbed out of it; on the street he is an interrogation in a puggery, or a satirical, parenthetical comment inclosed in feminine brackets. In the human ebb and flow upon your crowded pavements he is no more than a bubble upon a stream; but with us it is otherwise. We count the day, almost the hour, when the mail-packet is due from Australia; and from the cupola above we can track her passage from the horizon to the dock. No sooner is she comfortably moored than carriages begin to arrive at the hotel, and very shortly the corridors and verandas are swarming with tourists, mostly Colonial. That the Colonist has little knowledge of us is evident from the first; that he accepts our amiable explanations of the situation with the generous condescension of one who con- siders himself a superior being is evident to the last. His hopeless perplexity over the relative value of English and American coin- age; the startling ingenuousness of his inter- THE COLONIAL TRANSIT 63 rogations; his comic confusion at the bar, where, perhaps, for the first time in his life he attempts to solve the mystery of mixed drinks, do not drag him down to our level; we are still to be numbered among the milder attractions of the Hawaiian menagerie, and it is for this reason, I suppose, that the old kan- garoo in knickerbockers, and the dowager emu on his arm, turn from us disdainfully when we have been ogled to their hearts' con- tent. I would not have you think that there are not glorious men who come out of the bush; grand men having immense individuality; philosophers who have plunged into the waste places of the dark continent and dwelt there, and who have come back into the world again with a spiritual and mental growth that ought to atone for the absence of it in so many of their fellows; these stalwart explorers are not for a moment to be confounded with the average specimen, who, as long as he infests the hotel, is miserably divided between an anxiety as to the hour of "tiffin," and an over- willingness to cast his eye upon Government House and hallow it. 64 HAWAIIAN LIFE He has suffered no sea-change since the hour he abandoned the provinces; he stalks haughtily through our streets with an air im- plying that it is his conviction that an all-wise Providence, mindful of the possible visitation of a stray Australian, has therefore touched off a volcano of no mean dimensions. to light him on his way. The Colonial transit is not without interest, for the Colonists in transitu descend upon us in full feather, and depart like a precipitous flight of cranes and this is at least spec- tacular! Sic transit gloria coloniarum! XIII. DAY OF REST. HONOLULU, H. I DEVEREND DEAR FATHER: High mass was ^ over in the cathedral; twin sanctuary boys in scarlet cassocks and starched sur- plices were reverently extinguishing the tapers upon the high altar; the air was still freighted with incense- when I withdrew and wended my way to the postoffice. The postoffice is a shrine to which many pilgrimages are made on Sunday; the business man fulfills this duty religiously ; neither wind nor weather prevails against him. The angelus was ring- ing as I returned; a great throng of worship- ers that yet lingered within the Mission gates stood with heads uncovered from Angelus Domini to the last amen. Then I wandered up the valley thinking of you and of the days when you were with us seeking refreshment and rest; a celebrant at 65 66 HAWAIIAN LIFE that most precious altar; our guide, philoso- pher, and friend in suburban explorations and in quiet hours by the sea. But Sunday is no longer a day of rest for you, nor is it likely that you will ever again know rest till you have dropped in harness somewhere by the way- side, or in the mart, or the wilderness that has been trodden by your tireless feet these many, many years. I wish you might have been with us to-day, sweet saint ! You would have seen how I find a day of rest now and again; I, who need it so little yet have it, while you, who are so much in need of it, have it not. How- ever, I know that you will not begrudge me the avenue of royal palms I threaded, nor the lawn, with its breadths of verdant plush, nor the peristyle of roses, beneath which is a huge jade vase, bearing an epic of wonderland in high relief, and beyond which is a cot a kind of dove-cote perdu. Here one is sure of a welcome that just fits into a day of rest and perfects it. Under a ccinopy of creepers and climbers in bud, blossom, and fruit, there is a lounge with a happy valley in it where one may curl up and purr; there are easy-chairs DAY OF REST 6/ for cigarettes and tiny tables for black coffee after a dinner of unexampled delicacy and deliciousness. There is a dusky room, full of dainty wares, the silence of which is broken at intervals by a light touch upon the piano- keys wandering ringers in search of forgotten melodies; and there is a youngster flitting about like a butterfly a youngster that may have stepped out of the stained glass window of some dim cathedral and been made flesh, for aught I know. If the afternoon light is fierce, we make a tent of jamdari draperies, or hang folds of orange velvet for a screen, upon which shadow leaves are wrought in Japanese style, and we have an afterglow exquisite and exclusive. And eVer the flight of time is unheeded; clocks strike if they care to strike for the mere fun of it, and not at all in a business way. There are silent interludes; there are pages to be conned or let alone; sometimes we bubble over with mirth, for this also is restful; but nothing is permitted to disturb the repose which we cultivate as chief of the fine arts, not even the sharp showers that drive over us at uncertain intervals, with the 68 HAWAIIAN LIFE clatter of hail, leaving the grass and the flowers powdered with brilliants. It seems that nothing but night and dark- ness can round off so serenely sensuous an experience, and in the darkness of night we dissolve away, two of us walking side by side. Would we might make it three, ghostly father, but as we may not here's rue for you "we call it herb-grace o' Sundays" the grace I wish you and all Christian souls. Selah. XIV. HIGHWAYS. HONOLULU, H. I. T^o A FAIR ANONYMOUS, THESE LINES, IN MEMORY OF HAPPIER DAYS: You surely will remember the balmy afternoon when you surprised me in the solitude of Spook Hall. You had just set foot on shore; such a wee little foot, and so daintily shod by the by, it was the most beautiful of your sex who rose also from the wavcc upon the edge of a sum- mer isle! You awakeneJ me from a dream, to a reality more beautiful than a dream; you dazzled among the lilies, and broke the silence of the old Hall with glorious and triumphant song; and then, half regretfully, for the solem- nity of the place soothed and comforted you voyagers, we got upon wheels alas! that they were not chariot wheels and were driven through all the highways of the' tropical metropolis. 69 7O HAWAIIAN LIFE Do you remember how we bowled down the easy slope of Nuuanu Avenue, unique in the annals of highways, and in so many minutes had passed from the airy domains of the more luxurious residents into the very heat and burden of the town? I have traveled the avenue when it was merely a strip of land, like a tow-path, be- tween acres and acres of kalo; it was as i| the kalo patches had been miraculously divided, so that the exodus of the weary cit. izen was facilitated, and he passed through the midst thereof dry-shod. In those days there was another highway along the flank of Punch Bowl, that extinct town-crater, and the Nuuanu road was not fashionable; more- over, in those days it the latter I mean dipped into the upper stream, and the freshets guttered it with impunity; but now the higher way has fallen almost into disuse, and is the basis of a young Azorean colony. The bridge that spans the upper stream, the reclaimed kalo land, the numerous suburban villas, the fresher, sweeter air, and the shy showers that fall in the valley, but have spent their force long before they reach tho towa v these have HIGHWAYS /I made Nuuanu Avenue one of the most inter- esting and attractive of Honolulu highways. Still stand the walls of a mountain lodge far up the valley an angular stone ruin now, that was beloved of one of the Kamehamehas; and here the avenue is a broad pastoral way, with the tall grass waving upon its rough edges. There also is the summer home of the Queen Dowager, and at one end of the avenue is the famous Pali an astonishing pictorial climax; at the other is the town, hidden in a grove beside the sea. The lack of uniformity in the architecture on both sides of the avenue is one of its chief charms. It has been of slow growth; the cot of the early missionary remains, a very few of the humbler native huts likewise; even the coolie launderer spouts and sprinkles his linen in a shanty of his own contrivance, and within the fire limits there are at least two vegetable gardens of no mean dimensions on this very democratic highway. Over against these necessary evils, out of which much good cometh, the merchant princes have elaborated their dwellings, and in some instances have set their household godsandgoddessessamong 72 HAWAIIAN LIFE clustering palms, beside sparkling water courses, or where fountains play softly in per- fumed bowers. Have you forgotten a certain contiguity of shade, wherein graceful chalets and kiosks were half secreted; or the silver globes that shone like huge stars in the perpetual twilight that reigned there? It is true that the fauna was the fauna of the foundry, clad in thick coats of paint; but the flDra was the flora of fairyland. Beretania Street charmed you, and we drew up for a moment before the lovely lawn, with the most tropical of houses, under a huge tent-like roof, in the dim distance at the far end of the lawn; and there we saw gay lads and lassies tripping it fantastically at tennis. The leafy reservations, that are the pride of Emma Street, we coveted; and were breathless with delight as we slowly threaded the Gothic colonnade of palms that encircles the pleasure grounds at the Queen's Hospital. Through King Street, on the Plains, you were constantly exclaiming at the jungles of feath- ery mcsquite that clouded the air with demi- semi-shadows. HIGHWAYS 73 We catalogued the amazing possibilities of the Park, still in its pea-green adolescence; and came briskly townward on the Waikiki road, where the sea seemed very much higher than the shore, and the "league-long-roller" looked as if it must break over our heads the very next minute. Ah, me ! The sun set for you that night, and covered himself and all of us with glory, and you thought only to tarry forever in such a clime were heaven enough to comfort a world-weary soul. But you would not for you could not stay with us! Is it sorry you are, fair Penitent, now that you are defrauded of all this local loveliness? Serves you right! yoi> turned your back upon us, and when the moon was leaning over the shoulder of the hill, I saw your great ship fade like a phantom, and across the dim waste, out of the stillest night that ever was on sea or land, came a voice as of one crying in the wilderness of the waters: "Farewell, farewell, and once again farewell!" It was a long farewell, for the sound of that voice is stilled I shall hear it no more, forever! XV. BY-WAYS. HONOLULU, H. I. '"THE tropical metropolis is rich in by-ways; an accurate diagram of all its streets, alleys, lanes, passages, and short-cuts would resemble an Arabian scripture. Many of the lesser paths are known only to the initiated. All at once, some one appears upon the scene; he may have emerged from a banana thicket, or sidled out of a cleft in a wall, or crept through a knot-hole, *f or aught I know; it is as if he had been suddenly materialized. Somebody else as mysteriously disappears by a process of absorption, and the places that knew him a moment before know him no more for an indefinite period. I like these surprising exits and entrances. I always wish to follow the fellow-being who faded out like an effigy in a magic lantern, and learn his fate, but I never shall, though 74 BY-WAYS 75 seldom in this latitude does one read that aggressive legend "No Thoroughfare" a bit of gratuitous impertinence that prevails in most cities, and is no doubt a necessary snub to most citizens. I choose to preserve the mystery of these winding ways, and to people the undiscovered countries to which they lead with beings too bright for common use. The sweet seclusion of the streets, which was the delight of delightful Elia, may be taken literally here; and here, in consequence, Elia would miss all that offered him seclusion, and sweetened it to his taste. There are by-ways in which the cottages seem to have been designed exclusively for the home of love and the housing of herb din- ners; anything so gross as the stalled ox would give rank offense in these localities. The guitar is lightly strummed in a privacy bounded by jalousies, passion-flowers and myrtles. Love swings under his vine and fig tree in a hammock that has made of two souls a single chrysalis, and webbed a brace of hearts in one rapturous cocoon. The foot of the infrequent passer-by falls noiselessly in the grassy lane; the never very swift current of life in the tropics 76 HAWAIIAN LIFE drops one at intervals into dream-like eddies among the by-ways, where it is difficult to realize that one is quite awake nor am I sure that such is really the case. There is one weird by-way called Kukui Place. It abuts upon a plantation of banana, and a field of pulse and lentils. It carefully avoids a structure which was once a chapel, and emerges from the rear of the deconse- crated edifice, with a kind of shame-faced air, upon a brief but eminently respectable street. Kukui Place has a wall or a ridge upon one side of it; a toy-like cliff that overtops your head. A few diminutive lodges are grouped along this ledge, and the effect of the whole is unique, if not startling as if it were al- most an optical illusion, or were a little out of drawing, or were not exactly what it should be; probably it is not! That ridge, though it is considerably above sea level and far removed from the shore fully a quarter of a mile that ridge is a coral reef, and once upon a time the waves broke thunderously in Kukui Place, and there the now extinct monsters of the deep wallowed and sunned themselves; this was before the BY-WAYS 77 island had grown up or was peopled^possibly before the deluge. Not every by-way is a page of unwritten history; Kukui Place stands almost alone in this respect; but there are by-ways dearer to me than it has ever dared to be, and far dearer than any of. the more pretentious avenues. Science has deflowered the King's Highway; umbrageous boughs are lopped so that the aerial cable may twang nasal gossip upon the distended tympanum of a breathless island world; the galled jades wince there and are a spectacle to gods and men let us with- draw! Call these by-ways "cow-paths" if you will, for they are nameless, and only to be identified by some tree or flower, a color or an odor all their own; but they are the clew to velvety nooks where the solitary lead Crusoe lives, and even to look in upon them in the friendliest way seems like intrusion. There is one leafy lane I call my own; upon the two sides of it the rude stone walls are starred with lichen; the wild covolvulus tum- bles a cataract of blossoms along its turfy bed, and there the ghostly flower of the mid- night breathes its soul away under the watch- /8 HAWAIIAN LIFE ful stars. Within a mango grove, at the top of this lane, I see thatched gables; a bridle- path descends into a hollow vale, where the still waters are lily-laden, where goldfish and sunbeams flash in the amber depths. The birds cry "halt" at my approach, and the bees and butterflies circle about me to mislead me, for these are all its sentinels; but out of that Eden, blown softly upon the privileged winds, voices are borne to me, and music and the rhythm of dancing feet; and they that dwell therein set all their lives to the melody of lutes and laughter, and are always young and fair, and fearless of decay and death. Yet across the first sod in that alluring way I have never set my foot across it I never shall. I believe blindly in the perennial joys of that paradise; I bless it always as I pass it by, but I would rather pass it by forever than to risk bereavement in discovery; nor will I ever reveal to you, or any one, the place of its concealment. It is mine alone! XVI. IN THE MARKET-PLACE. HONOLULU, H. I. ANGLER: You, who pride yourself on your apostolical proclivities, who have whipped all the trout streams within the state boundaries, and cast your net in the deep sea where, I beg leave to remind you, you long since sunk your reputation for veracity if you could only lounge with me in the market- place at dawn, when the fish are freshest, or on Saturday afternoon, when the .Hawaiian lays in his family supplies. If you only could ! Fish, flesh, and fowl are displayed in abundance under an expansive roof that, like the black tent of the Bedouin, is meant only for a kind of sunshade. On one hand glares the sun of the tropics; on the other sparkles the tropical sea; there are no cool slabs of marble here, with rows of huge salmon shim- mering under showers of artificial spray; we 79 8O HAWAIIAN LIFE have nothing but benches of the rudest sort, and these are littered with a variety of mer- chandise, hopelessly confused. Fish catch the eye at once; pretty painted things that look as if they had been designed for the ornamentation of a fountain or a par- lor aquarium, rather than for table use. Fish that have swum through sunset seas and caught their radiant dyes; fish that might leap a rainbow without deranging its seven- toned harmony; fish like prisms with fins or fans, rather, and Japanese fans at that! Oh, what flashing fish! fantailed moonbeams and sunbeams; phosphorescent firebrands; elfish things cased in shining armor ambas- sadors from the coral kingdom. Angel-fish gauzy-winged amphibia, born of the foam and a star-ray; sea-meteors that glance from the crest of a wave and go out with a visible splash; delicious, pulpy, manna-like morsels, that, when daintily dished, are a sauce unto themselves. And other assorted piscatorial bric-a-brac. From the market place one looks directly upon the marine pastures where these rlocks feed; mermen, knee-deep upon the reef, are IN THE MARKET-PLACE 8 1 herding them; mermaidens mock them in their gambols; bronze -brown babies dot the middle distance these also are fishified, and may be classed as Cyclostomata, having eel- like bodies, a cartilaginous skeleton, and ad- hesive mouths. All the aquatic delicacies of the season are here, and here is the most delicate of all. It is not a mould of starch it is pale, pearly, opalescent, globular; beneath it knots of clinging tendrils, that, like the locks of Me- dusa, are instilled with individual life, wave languidly; sometimes these elongated, bone- less ringers, fashioned out of curd, and sopped in whey, clasp one another feebly in mild des- pair. Its bulbous body resembles a large soap bubble, filled with smoke; it is a spherical cloud charged with forked red lightning; dart- ing veins appear and disappear; little fire- balls jet fiercely from the heart and are buried in vapory tissues. It is like an enormous blood-shot eye, ripped from the socket of some monster, and still sweating great tears; its roots are a tangle of jellied streamers, and in the center of it is a shadowy pupil, whose stony stare is fixed upon you while you drive ;i sharp bargain in the market-place. 82 HAWAIIAN LIFE This is the delicious squid, the devil-fish, dissolving in slow death; and he it is, when in his element, who brings an embarrassing period to a swift conclusion by disappearing under a squirt of ink as I do now. XVII. AMONG THE WREATH-MAKERS. HONOLULU, H. I. have I thought of you, dear D with your pot of sweet basil on the win- dow seat, and Keats' melodious rhyme, which we were wont to quote upon it. Oftener have I thought of you when linger- ing among the wreath-makers, who ply their delicate trade in the shadow of the Queen's garden. The wreath-makers come to town in the morning laden with cut flowers; a calabash of poi and a quart bucket of coffee are a necessary portion of this burden, for they come to make a day of it, and part of a night, also. There is a space allotted to each of them on the pavement, or underneath the shop- windows, or along the saloon verandas; but the most pastoral quarter is by the garden of S3 84 HAWAIIAN LIFE the Dowager Queen; that background is the fittest for these primitive bazaars, which are without other appurtenance save a single mat, barely broad enough to lie upon. Here the wreath-maker displays her wealth: flowers, flowers, flowers of all colors, forms, and perfumes; heaps of petals and coronas, dis- membered corollas, lying in fluffy snow-drifts or drifts of flaky gold; rose-tinted, shell- shaped leaves, and leaves of every hue pow- dered with pollen; pollen dust upon the fingers of the weavers, who with long thread- likerushes make ropes wherewith love binds his victims. Color and form and perfume, a triplication of beauty to hang about the neck and bind the brows withal. All day these wreaths which we call lets are for sale at the hands of drowsy venders, who are squatted out of doors under the sun; and in the evening, when the glow-worm lan- terns are alight, there is much merriment and brisk bargaining, for the unregenerate youth of the land go to and fro, crowning one another like Bacchantes. Color and form and frag- rance! it is a wonder that the bee does not hive with these flower girls, and for once for- AMONG THE WREATH-MAKERS 85 get to be busy; a wonder that the pendulous humming-bird does not flash like a flame, or blossom like a flower, in that odoriferous at- mosphere; but they don't at least, not to my knowledge. Dusky Lotharios haunt the roe-eyed wearers of garlands, and babble foolishly as if drunken with balsamic balm. The pilgrim and the stranger bends his neck to the flower- yoke with ludicrous precipitancy; but there comes a time when he is fully acclimated, when each whiff of cocoanut oil dispels an illu- sion; when he discovers that Hawaiian women are not all young and not all fair; when, in passing the congregation of wreath-makers, his nostrils alone are elated and the tipsy salute of young Flora in the dishevelled holoku is as ineffectual as a blast from a trumpet- flower. XVIII. FROM A STUDIO HONOLULU, H. I. TT is a perfect barn of a house, the only one of the kind in the kingdom, and, being a veritable studio, as the needle to the pole it has faced about upon the north, and stands over against the chief avenue in the very ecstasy of triangulation. Even the door of it is not visible to the naked eye; the weather-stained structure, seasoned in sunshine and shower, looks a little like a trap to catch customers, and, sure enough, that is just what it is designed for in common with studios the world over. Approaching the studio you cross a strip of lawn, where the ducks waddle in solemn pro cession, and where cattle browse or look dreamily at you, divided between silent med- itation and the grinding of the convenient FROM A STUDIO 87 cud; and then you slip in behind a lattice and tap at a pair of green blinds. The interior is of a smoked meerschaum tint; the paint there has been devoted exclu- sively to canvases; but there are lots of these, in all stages of composition and decomposi- tion, as the case may be; and a plentiful sprinkling of crayon studies and arrangements in black and white. There are bits of faded drapery of the tone which time alone imparts; and stiff, barbarously decorated bark-cloths from the south seas; canoe models, camp- stools, easels, and divan; portfolios gaping full of pencil-notes and impressions; a jumble of the odds and ends which art utilizes and idealizes and a guitar. Many a day have we lounged there in the off hours, most of us more or less known to you; many an evening camped under the airy roof-tree and told stories in the twilight, while the great north window with its num- berless panes of glass looked like a square acre in heaven's blue diamond fields. Then music awoke, and with the lamp-light came cards or off-hand sketches, and caricatures, jolly souvenirs of the occasion. But it is not 88 HAWAIIAN LIFE this phase of art-life in Oahu that I choose to write of this murky post-meridian. I want to know and I want you to tell me, if you can, why we cluster in one corner of that studio, lie back in the easy chairs, and look wistfully through the smoke-rings that float like haloes above our heads, while we talk of Munich, or of Monterey, or of Barbi- zon? Is it because the beery young Bauer, with the tow-head and pomegranate cheeks, whose portrait hangs there on the wall, reminds us of student life in the old Bavarian ex-monas- tical academy? Is it because the strip of beach, with the gray gulls soaring among the cypresses, recalls the dead and alive era of California's now resurrected ancient and orig- inal capital? Or because the lonely winding path in the very dark wood, with the very blue and white sky breaking through it, trans- ports us in the twinkling of an eye to the forests of Fontainebleau? Or is it merely the perversity of man, who is never quite sat- isfied, and would no doubt be utterly miser- able if all his ends could be easily accom- plished? FROM A STUDIO 89 I know that were we to shut up shop on the avenue, and revisit the glimpses of the moon in any one of the three art centers above referred to, a single glance at the studies we would surely take with us at this palm- tree in aquarelle, for instance; or that reef with the green wave arching over it; or yon- der sunset valley, filled with ferns and water- falls would awaken a thousand longings and regrets; then, one mess of tropical pottage would be more to our taste than all the birth- rights in the universe and this is the taste of man from Adam's natal-day to kingdom come. Never you mind, dear boy, we have had studio junketings the very memory of which rolls as a sweet morsel under the tongue. We have lived, my boy, we have lived! The landscape and the seascape have been our meat and our drink, when we hungered and were athirst for exactly that sort of nourish- ment; and jf it is our destiny to be eventually numbered among the blessed company of the impoverished, we can at least perish in the cause of art and for the love of it, and with the hope of receiving the approbation of the HAWAIIAN LIFE immortals who were martyred in like manner before us, and who are now dwellers in the highest heaven! XIX. FETES AND FURIES. HONOLULU, H, I. ask if the Hawaiian Fete is as popular, populous, and peculiar as it was in early days, when you rounded the Horn before the mast, and came ashore for your health. No! a thousand times, No! Occasionally majesty entertains a roving prince in his sum- mer house at Waikiki. It is an affair in which the brass band, brass buttons, champagne, and poi become more or less confused by eventide. Sometimes the flower of Hawaii, a flower that has been grafted almost beyond a recog- nition, takes to the saddle, and to the woods that shelter the enchanting vales on our side of the island. There one finds song and dance and a /4 HAWAIIAN LIFE from their home in the belfry, but for the last time to-day; they soon returned, and, slowly and decorously waltzing about for a moment on their slender pink legs, disappeared within the shelter of the tower. Down yonder, at this hour everyone is in his easy-chair smoking, chatting or dreaming; there comes a sudden flash across the twilight sky; the marsh hens begin to pipe in the rushes; the moths hover about with big star- ing carnelian eyes, and dash frantically at the old-fashioned astral-lamp that stands on the center-table in the large open parlor. The night falls suddenly; the air grows cool and moist; a great golden star darts from its sphere and sails through the dewy-dark, leav- ing a wake of fire. O Lahaina! my Lahaina! I am reminded of some verses I once made upon you years and years ago. I think they ran as follows: LAHAINA. Where the wave tumbles; Where the reef rumbles; Where the sea sweeps Under bending palm-branches, Sliding its snow-white And swift avalanches AFTERGLOW Where the sails pass O'er an ocean of glass. Or trail their dull anchors Down in the sea-grass. Where the hills smoulder; Where the plains smoke; Where the peaks shoulder The clouds like a yoke; Where the dear isle, Has a charm to beguile As she rests in the lap Of the seas that enfold her. Wher.e shadows falter; Where the mist hovers Like steam that covers. Some ancient altar. Where the sky rests On deep wooded crests; Where the clouds lag; Where the sun floats His glittering motes Swimming the rainbows That girdle the crag, Where the newcomer In deathless summer Dreams away troubles; Where the grape blossoms And blows its sweet bubbles, Where the goats cry From the hillside carrel; Where the fish leap In the weedy canal 205 2O6 HAWAIIAN LIFE In the hallow lagoon With its waters forsaken; Where the dawn struggles With night for an hour. Then breaks like a tropical Bird from its bower. Where from the long leaves The fresh dew is shaken; Where the wind sleeps, And where the birds waken. Ah me! Again and yet again, ah me! Will they rob these gentle people of their birthright and their crown? Protect them certainly: they need protection. They have been at the mercy of unscrupulous whites ever since the days of that old pirate Captain Cook. He began it, and the whalers con- tinued it, and the scheming politicians have concluded it. It is an ungodly record, but such an one as the white man is apt to make whenever he finds himself among those who are unacquainted with his wiles. They need protection in Hawaii. America is the natural godfather of the Kingdom. Let America protect them but annex them, never! Is it that bell, again, and rings it with a more hopeful tone? I pray it may be so. And here end these memories of a precious AFTERGLOW 2O/ past. Oh Island Home! made sacred by a birth and by a death; haunted by sweet and solemn memories. What if thy rocking palm boughs are as muffled music and thy reef a dirge? Please Heaven, the joy-bells that have rung in the happy past shall ring again in the hopeful future, and life once more grow rosy in the radiance of the afterglow. XXIX. ON THE REEF. upon a time it was on one of those nights when without apparent reason the spirit of mortal is rilled with vague unrest I strode into the starlight and sought with a kind of desperation the least frequented paths, such as lead away out of the borders of the town toward the shadowy hills. On such a night the superstitious note with awe the faintest articulation, and too often attribute the least sound to a super- natural cause. I remember that the hedges seemed to shudder at intervals and shadows to move noiselessly before me, while the water that trickled in the shallow stream muttered a refrain that was almost like human speech. When I stumbled in the darkness I was vexed, and the still air, heavily charged with electricity, was irritating and aggressive. I had got beyond the reach of voices, as I 208 ON THE REEF 2O9 thought, and was groping in the deep shade of clustering kamani trees, when a dull mur- mur, like the drone of the hive, fell upon my ear. I paused to listen. The crickets were chirping bravely, the rill fell with a hollow note into the pool below, and from far away came the solemn suspiration of the sea. Then I saw a light dimly flickering among the branches in the path and I advanced with some caution, for I was in no mood to discover myself to any one in that seeming solitude. A few paces distant stood a rude grass hut such as the Hawaiian formerly inhabited, but which, alas, has been suffered to fall into dis- use. A door, its only aperture, stood open. Upon a broad, flat stone within the center of the hut flamed a handful of faggots, and over these bowed the withered forms of two vener- able Hawaiians, who may have been the last representatives of the ancient race. They were squatted upon their lean haunches, their fleshless arms were extended, their claw-like fingers clasped above the flames. They were both nude, and the light that played about them exaggerated their wrinkles so that the 2IO HAWAIIAN LIFE face of each I say it in all seriousness re- sembled a baked apple. They were chanting in turn one of those weird meles, now sel- dom heard and soon to be utterly forgotten. Their thin voices gathered strength as they recounted the triumphs of departed heroes and the glory that has passed forever. The quiv- ering voices were at times blended, and the ancient bards locked in a tremulous embrace; but at last, profoundly agitated, while the tears coursed their hollow cheeks, they folded their arms above their bowed foreheads, and shaken with tremors, rocked to and fro in the fading firelight and were dumb. They were bewailing the fate of their people a fate that in very many respects is to be deplored. Never again can aught be made of them, for their doom is accomplished. And how? We shall see. > Years ago I sat under the eaves of a grass house which stood upon this sand-dune and looked out upon the reef as I am looking now; the afternoon was waning; the wind, that had for hours been whirling the fine sand in eddies around the corner of the ON THE REEF 211 house, began to fail, and the sea, with all its waves, subsided upon the reef. It was as if the little island world was about to com- pose itself in sleep; on the contrary, we were but beginning to recover from the inertia in- duced by the tireless activity of the elements. On my lap lay the only volume I was able to discover in the vicinity, an ill-used copy of the "Evidences of Christianity." How it came into the possession of Pilikia, my host, I know not, but that he had found it of great service was evident. At least half of the pages had already been disposed of and the remnant a catacomb of white ants and such other vermin as affect literature in the tropics was sure to follow in due course. Pilikia politely offered me this precious volume at an early stage of our acquaintance, for we were quite unable to communicate with one another, he being stone deaf and I as good as dumb in those days. The truth is, I was awaiting the return of Kane Pihi, the man-fish, with whom I proposed to pass a night upon the reef practicing the art which had already distinguished him and had won for him the admiration and the envy of his fellow-craftsmen. 212 HAWAIIAN LIFE Anon I closed the volume with decision; the evidences were incomplete, and I was impatient for the arrival of the man-fish, who was certainly more interesting than the anti- quated specimen of humanity who sat in the corner of the hut, like an idol, and whose blue-black, weather-beaten figure-head looked as if it had been carved out of a walrus' tusk and smoked. I arose impetuously, shook off my ennui and strolled along the beach. There was a joyous sparkle upon the sea; little windy waves slid up the sloping sands, curled crisply and retired in a white litter of explosive bub- bles; diminutive crabs rushed pell-mell before my feet; at intervals I felt the sting of the ilying sand, but the heat and the burden of the day were about over and I began to lift up my heart, when in the hollow of the shore, sheltered only by sand ridges, I saw a dark object stretched motionless at full length. Flotsam or jetsam, the prize was mine, and I hastened forward. It was a youth just out of his teens, a slim, sleek creature, uncon- scious, unclad, sprawled inartistically, absorb- ing sunshine and apparently steeped to the ON THE REEF 213 toes in it; it was Kane Pihi, the man-fish stark asleep. Retiring a little distance, I tossed a pebble upon his motionless body; then another and another, and finally a whole handful of them. At last he turned, with a serpentine move- ment, lifting his head like a lizard, swaying it slowly to and fro and looking listlessly upon the sand and the sea. When he espied me he coiled his limbs under him and was con- vulsed with riotous laughter. I approached him and exhausted my vocab- ulary in five minutes, but I learned meanwhile that the fellow had been lying there on the hot sand in the blazing sun for a good portion of the day, and that now he was ready to eat. Two things on earth were necessary to the existence of this superior animal to eat and to sleep; but for pleasure and profit, for life and all that makes it liveable, the man-fish sought the waters under the earth. He was amphibious. Pilikia born to trouble, as his name implies, and like all who are never out of it, living to the age of the prophetsPilikia still sat in his corner when we returned to the 214 HAWAIIAN LIFE grass house, but upon the appearance of Kane-Pihi, the apple of his eye, the child of his old age, peradventure, his face changed suddenly, as if about to weep. This simula- tion of tearless agony was his method of showing joy. The range of facial expression had grown limited with him and he now seemed to be gradually assuming the fixed, blank stare of the dead. Pilikia crawled out of his obscurity and we all gathered about a calabash of poi in the door of the hut as the sun shot suddenly into the sea. Kane-Pihi began to awaken as the twilight deepened; his eyes he had bronze eyes, that were opaque in the sunshine grew limpid and lustrous; he began to search the wave as if he could pluck from it the heart of its mystery. Perhaps he could; perhaps its color and texture imparted to him secrets unknown to us. Now and again he sang to himself fragments of mclcs that sounded like invoca- tions and added sacredness to an hour exqui- sitely beautiful and pathetic. The sea advanced and retreated noiselessly along the shelving sand ; each wavelet, unroll- ing like a scroll, told its separate story and ON THE REEF 2 I 5 was withdrawn into the deep. For a moment the shore was glossed where the waters had passed over it, but this varnish immediately grew clouded, like a mirror that has been breathed upon, and then vanished, leaving only a dark shadow in the moist sand. Long, luminous bars lay upon the more distant water, and beyond these the rough edges of the reef, now exposed to the air, were lightly powdered with filmy and prismatic spray. It was dark when v/e set forth in Kane-Pihi's canoe. Pilikia, who also revived under the beneficent influence of the stars, followed us to the water's edge and even made a feint of aiding us in the launch of our canoe. Our course lay down the coast, within the reef. We might easily have waded throughout the length and breadth of the lagoon but for the shoals of sharp coral and the jagged hills among them, of which I knew nothing, though each coral prong was familiar to the man- fish, it having been his chief end to chart every inch of the lagoon at an early stage in his career. Oh, heavenly night! We floated upon an element that seemed a denser atmosphere; 2l6 HAWAIIAN LIFE this delicious air was like the spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters. We were both silent, for the earth and sea were silent, but now and again we heard a "glug" under our bow, where a bewildered fish had swum into the air by mistake and dived back in dismay. The mysterious voyage filled me with a kind of awe, such as a surprised soul might feel after sudden death, upon finding itself propelled slowly across the Styx by an almost invisible Charon. In this mood we rounded the lagoon, and lo, the sea radiant with flaming torches and peopled by a race of shadowy fishers- bronzed, naked, statuesque. The superb spectacle inspired Kane-Pihi; with an excla- mation of delight he plunged his paddle into the water and a half dozen vigorous strokes brought us where he was at once recognized and received with every demonstration of affection. In the charmed circle all things were trans- formed; the earth and the very stars were forgotten; the sea was like wine, ripples of perfume played upon its surface; the torches above it were imaged in the water below, ON THE REEF 2I/ where the coral glowed resplendently and the bewildered fish darted to their doom in basket- nets or at the point of the glancing spear. The fishers were for the most part dumb as statues; with a thousand exquisite poses they searched the luminous depths for the fleet prey that shone like momentary sunbeams and were as speedily captured and transferred to their canoes. In this graceful art the women, costumed like fabled sea-nymphs, were as skill- ful as the men, and even when we had drifted in the shallows, and they, descending into the sea, were wandering apart each with a torch in one hand, a net in the other and a sack hanging upon the hip, they were as fearless and as active as the best man among "them. But this kind of fishing was mere child's play in the eyes of Kane-Pihi and only the diver- sion of a night. Hour after hour the flotilla dazzled upon the tideless lagoon; it was only when the waters seemed to have been robbed of their last vestige of finny life that we separated and soared like meteors into outer darkness. Then I became conscious of fatigue, and throwing myself upon a mat in the corner of 2l8 HAWAIIAN LIFE Pili Ida's grass house I slept while Kane-Pihi sang into the dawn. In those days a barren plain, relieved here and there by stretches of salt-marsh land, lay between the fishing grounds and the seaport. It was seldom that Kane-Pihi entered the town. A gentle savage, whose childhood had been passed upon the shore of the least civil- ized of the islands of the group, his uncon- ventional life had scarcely fitted him for any- thing so confining as a pavement or a trim garden spot, hedged or fenced about in indi- vidual exclusiveness. He had lounged in the fish market, where his fame had preceded him, but the clamoring crowd soon drove him forth, and when he had sat for an hour in silent contemplation of the street traffic, he strode soberly back to the hut on the sand-dunes and dreamed away the disgust with which such method and industry invariably inspired him. We sat together one morning looking far off upon the town and far off upon the sea in comfortable idleness. We had hoped for a change in the spirit of our dream and it came presently, for it was observed that a school of ON THE REEF 219 fish was making for the shore. In an instant several canoes were slid into the water and a dozen excited natives went in hot pursuit of the spoil. Before the day of dynamite deep-sea fishing was an art in which few excelled, but with Kane-Pihi it was a specialty, and when we had weathered the breakers and were out upon the swell beyond the reef, he dropped a handful of bait into the water and watched it as it slowly sank; then he cautiously climbed out of the canoe and with fearless resignation sank after it. It was as if he were braving all the laws of nature as if he were defying death itself. - Breathlessly I watched him as he sank feet foremost into the depths; I saw his motion- less body slowly descending, growing dimmer in outline all the while; I saw the fish circling suspiciously about him, attracted by the bait, which they were greedily devouring, and evi- dently filled with curiosity as to the nature of the man-fish in their midst, who, like a corpse, was fading in the horrible obscurity of the sea; then, at the moment when it seemed that life must have deserted him, with a sudden 220 HAWAIIAN LIFE lunge he buried a knife in the body of a huge fish and rose like a water-wraith out of the waves. It was the work of a moment only, but it seemed to me an age since I had seen the sea close over him. Several times he repeated the act success- fully, and it became difficult to see through the blood-stained water, but by moving the canoes cautiously from point to point, we still kept within reach of the shoal and avoided the crimson cloud that marked the scene of Kane-Pihi's recent marine combat. A highly successful catch was the reward of his prowess, and with our canoe well laden, we headed for the shore. Those who were watching us from the beach must have lost sight of us at intervals as we rose and sank upon the rollers. Sometimes the comber that broke between us and the land looked like a precipitated avalanche of snow, and the mass behind us swelled and burst, darting forward with an impetuosity that threatened the destruction of our frail craft. But into the wilderness of this tumult- uous sea it was Kane-Pihi's intention to venture, and through the midst of it lay our ON THE REEF 221 perilous course. With a paddle that was never at rest, we hovered upon the outer edges of the reef, hastening over the brow of a billow before it broke, for it was only upon the bosom of one of these monsters that we could hope for safety, and the one had not yet arrived. Like a bird's pinion, the paddle held us poised suspended in mid-air, I had almost written until, with an impulse which was an inspiration, Kane-Pihi plowed the sea with swift, impetuous strokes. I felt the canoe leap forward before a wave that seemed rising to overwhelm us; we rose with it, on the inner slope of it, just out of reach of the torrent of foam that hissed and roared behind us. How we sped onward in that mad chase! The very canoe seemed instilled with life; nervous tremors seized it; it was almost as if some invisible power were about to sweep it from under us; so fast it iied over the oily slope of the huge wave, at the top of which tumbled a world of foam and thus, with hardly so much as a stroke of the paddle, after we were well settled on the down grade, we sprang like a flying- fish into the tranquil waters of the lagoon and then 222 HAWAIIAN LIFE turned to one another with a half-gasp, as if we had been delivered from sudden death. This was the life of the man-fish; if he had been upset in the breakers he would have come to shore none the worse for it, but my blood would have stained the reef for a moment and my bones found coral sepulture. Thus he played with the elements having not so much vanity as a child, nor so much wisdom either, though he was weather wise, knew all about the moods of the wind and waves, could do everything but shape them and there I left him to sleep away the hot hours in the hot sun and sand; to eat when he listed and wait upon the turning of the tides, or the advent of those fishy episodes that were events in his life; a perfectly con- stituted creature, whose highest ambition he could himself satisfy at almost any moment; who, I venture to affirm, never did harm to any one, and who unquestionably was, in his line, a complete and unqualified success in brief, a perfect human animal, who was doing in his own way and in his own good time what he could towards destroying the last vestiges of the "Evidences of Christianity." ON THE REEF 223 In revisiting an inconsiderable community nothing is more natural than for one to pick up the threads where they were dropped and then seek to work out the story of the lives of those with whom he has been associated in former years, and in this wise I was busy enough for some weeks upon my return to Honolulu. I soon began to familiarize myself with all that had transpired in the intervening decade, and was making lazy pilgrimages to various points of interest, when it occurred to me that the prison was still unvisited. In the delectable kingdom of which I write the law-breakers in former times were con- demned to a period of servitude upon the reef. There, at low water, they hewed out the coral blocks, of which many of the early buildings were constructed, and to this day a convict is spoken of as being "on the reef," although coral has given place to brick and stone and timber, and the reef is compara- tively deserted. At once, or as nearly on the instant as one ever gets in an easy-going land, I made appli- cation at the gate of the neatest, coziest, 224 HAWAIIAN LIFE cleanest and most cheerful House of Correc- tion in the world. In form and color only is it outwardly severe, and even this is the kind of severity affected by those suburban resi- dents who build angular, gray monuments of masonry and inhabit them in an uncomfortably mediaeval frame of mind. It stands upon a coral ridge and is almost surrounded by fish- ponds, mud-flats and salt-marshes. It is approached by a well-kept, but unsheltered, coral-dusted drive, that glares in the sunshine and moonlight as if to magnify the shadow of him who is being led away captive, or to cast a glory about the feet of the one who is set free. I knocked with a knocker surrounded by a British lion in bronze, the gate was immediately opened by a native guard in a dark uniform, who, like all natives in dark uniforms, looked exceedingly stuffy and uncomfortable. I asked leave to enter. He seemed to think I had done him a favor and honor in calling, upon such a very warm day, and at once waved me gracefully across a court that was as trim and complete as a modern stage setting for an act in a society drama. There was, I confess, a superfluity ON THE REEF 22$ of very neat stonework in wall and pavement, but there were flower plots quite like stage flower plots and a moderate perspective, which seemed heightened by exaggerated fore- shortening, all of which was at once quite evident to the naked eye. Other guards, perched in picturesque nooks and corners, smiled a welcome as I advanced. The original stuffed one, who had backed mechanically into his little sentry-box out of the sun, was also smiling, and smiling very broadly for a man on serious duty. Might I come in and inspect the prison? Assuredly. Would I only be good enough to look at everything, see everybody, go every- where and then graciously inscribe my name in the finest of visitors' books, with the very whitest of paper and a very brave array of signatures? I went in and out, up and down, over and across and back again. The valley of Rasselas could not have been more peace- ful than was the inner court of that island jail, with its spreading kamani tree in the midst thereof. The keeper apologized for the smallness of his family at the moment; he begged to assure me that there were more 226 HAWAIIAN LIFE than I found present; that the house was always full; those whom I saw were the lame, the halt and the blind; the able-bodied were all out at work on the road, clad in garments of two colors half and half like a chorus in Boccaccio, at the expense of the Government. If those of the infirmary, sunning them- selves in the court, were so merry, what must be the state of the able-bodied, thought I. I had seen detachments of them at their work work which they evidently did not take to heart, but, on the contrary, regarded in the light of a somewhat tedious joke. While I was absorbed in the legends of the local museum, illustrated with celebrated shackles, bits of hangman's rope, blood-stained implements of destruction and a whole rogue's gallery of interesting criminals, there was a sound of revelry, and lo ! the prisoners who had had their outing were returning joyously to this haven of rest, and some of them with- out a keeper. Chief among the Ishmaelitish crew was one who wore his prison garb jaun- tily, who betrayed a tendency to good-natured bravado and who kept his fellows in a roar. The Warden presently claimed my attention ON THE REEF 22? and told me something of the prisoner's his- tory. He had been reared among primitive people; was superstitious, ingenious, confid- ing; knew little or nothing of foreign ways and manners and cared little to hear of them. The simplicity of his life assured his perpet - ual happiness, but of course there was no hope of his development he must forever remain contented with his lot and perish like the beast of the field, if nature were to take her course; but nature was not permitted to take her course she seldom, or never, is nowadays. An itinerant evangelist arrived in Honolulu and began his work. The Hawaiian is nothing if not emotional. You may rouse him to the pitch of frenzy, and he will subside without having achieved anything more than a thrill; but the thrill is very much to him and is worth striving for. The natives became as wax in the presence of this magnetic exhorter. Prayer meetings were held night and day. There was a corner in new Testaments and hymn-books. Prophets whether true or false you will decide for yourselves arose in numbers, and the Scriptures were very freely 228 HAWAIIAN LIFE interpreted. Yet, if out of the mouths of babes and sucklings cometh forth wisdom, it may be that these dark ones were wiser in that day than the children of light. Natives were gathering from far and near, attracted by the rumors which surcharged the atmosphere and by the "messenger of the lord," who ran to and fro gathering the lost sheep into the fold of Kaumakapili, This youth who, while we discussed him, was regaling the prisoners in the courtyard with a hula-hula, was finally seduced into the town and ultimately into the fold. Kamakapili, whatever may be said of its evasive order of architecture, has a reputation established beyond question, and the evening meetings held in that trysting-place are ever popular with the young. Hither came this child of nature, and here, listening to the experiences most eloquently detailed of those who had turned from the error of their ways and found salvation under the eaves of Kau- makapili, he in his turn repented of what it is not easy to conjecture and was baptized. It is my belief that the native modesty of the Hawaiian, and of all unclad races, is ON THE REEF extinguished the moment they are slipped under cover. They put on vice as a garment and with knowledge comes the desire for evil; so when Kane-Pihi got into foreign clothing he straightway began to backslide. He picked up bits of English, grew sharp at a bargain, learned to lie a little when necessary, and to cheat now and again. He took that which was not his, not because he meant to defraud the owner of it, but because he needed it him- self, and finding it in his way laid hands on it. This he used to do before he knew it was a sin, and in those days he expected you to take of his possessions in like manner accord- ing to your need, but now there was a new pleasure in doing it the excitement of secrecy added an interest to the act which he had never until this hour known. God pity him! Many and various experiences sharpened the convert's wits, and he became one of the cleverest boys in town one on whom its mild-eyed constabulary bent loving glances; but his career was shortened, for having shat- tered one of the commandments the only one of the ten whose number shall be name- less he was arrested, tried, convicted, and 230 HAWAIIAN LIFE was now serving out his time with charming abandon. His story touched me, though it was not without parallel in the kingdom. There, indeed, it is an oft-told tale. We descended into the courtyard, where the young rascal was beguiling his fellows, and I saw (I had suspected it) that he was none other than my young friend of yore com- pletely transformed by civilization in other words, Kane-Pihi, the man-fish, out of his element. We had a few moments 1 conversa- tion; these few were sufficient to convince me that his case was hopeless. He could never again return to the life which he was born to and in which it seemed that he could do no guile, for those with whom he was asso- ciated were as guileless as he, and they were alike subject to no temptations and no snares ; but he must now go on to the bitter end, for he had eaten of the tree of knowledge and fallen in its shade. As for the ancient Pilikia, it vizs pau pilikia with him ; his troubles were over. When he saw the fate of his idol and that no pleading and no incantation could bring the lad to his right mind, the old man turned his face to ON THE REEF 231 the wall and gave up the ghost; he tasted death and found it sweeter than the new which had defrauded him of his own. The boy spoke of it as a matter of course; all who live must die, and, Heaven knows, as the boy implied, he had lived long enough, and with this he returned to the dance. The chains of the jail birds rang gayly over the battlements as I bade farewell to the keeper and the kept. Among the latter are several of the graduates of Lahainaluna, the Protestant Theological Seminary of the king- dom. The little sentinel showed me out, full of pride and good cheer and swelling bravely in his stuffed jacket, and the key clanked musically in the big lock as I set my face toward town. It is said that this prison is the despair of the rising generation; that those who are turned from it pine until they once more enjoy its inexpensive hospitality and that the merriest and the mildest people in the world are prisoners. Courage, my children! If you can only be naughty enough you, too, in the course of time, shall inherit the penitentiary. Again I look upon the reef, but now from 232 HAWAIIAN LIFE a hillslope skirted by a belt of perennial ver- dure; between us a vein of water, the pulse of the sea, throbs languidly. The reef, an amber shoal, seems to rise and flow twice in the four and twenty hours as the tide falls and to slowly subside meanwhile, until much of it is submerged, but there is always a visible strip of rank green grass, and upon it is perched a cluster of low whitewashed hovels just above highwater mark the whited sepulchers of the lazaretto. It is possible to drive through the shallows that ripple between the reef and the mainland when the tide is out. Indeed, one may wade through it then without much difficulty, but the lazaretto is zealously guarded when pes- tilence has filled it with tenants, and it is rare indeed that any one succeeds in escaping from this desolate, wind-swept strand. They are pretty enough when seen from shore, these small white hovels, and especially so when, looking from a distant hilltop, one sees the sun launch from a rent cloud his golden bolts upon them, or a rainbow precipitates its curved torrent in their midst, flooding them with prismatic splendor. The reef, or rather ON THE REEF 233 that part of the reef, for it is all one, though a ship may pass through the clefts in it at long intervals, seems like a phantom island to most of us, for there are times when it has well-nigh disappeared and when even the little huts are almost obscured by dark cloud- shadows, and then again it shines in glory and the silver surf beyond it leaps against a wall of saphyre, and the sands glisten like refined gold, It was during my third visit to the Hawaiian capital when, having looked off upon the reef night and morning, and at midday and moon- light, from a serene height, I grew to know it as a theme capable of infinite variation; a kind of poem to whi'ch every day, at almost every hour, added a new stanza; a picture that was always complete, though never fin- ished. About this time it was publicly announced that a great luau would be given at the laza- retto, the occasion being the anniversary of the staying of the plague. Now there is no absolute necessity for the introduction of smallpox into the Hawaiian kingdom, for among the natives the measles are sufficiently 234 HAWAIIAN LIFE destructive; but the smallpox has appeared and desolated the people more than once. In such cases it is hard to segregate the victims, for love is stronger than death, and too often the seeds of death are nourished in the bosom of love. But a year or more before my third visit, by persistent energy the authorities gathered some hundreds of natives, and not a few foreigners, upon the reef, and of these no small proportion perished, and the natives were interred in the sand. I think of that sad season when I look upon the reef of an evening and behold the watch-fires of the quarantine twinkling across the sea, and when, by daylight, the sequestered coolies swarm like ants upon the sand, yearning, no doubt, as souls in purgatory, for the heavenly hills which we inhabit. In common with the masses, I crossed the ford on the day appointed and joined them at the luan on the reef. A temporary lanai, or marquee, had been erected for the feast, which is the foundation of a luan. Musicians were there and hula dancers, for without these no litau is worthy of the name. There was eating, overmuch of it, and tern- ON THE REEF 235 perate drinking and music almost incessantly. Many of the songs were composed for the occasion. The improvisator!" were chanting the requiems for the dead, the eulogies to the living and in each case stirring the hearts of the listeners to pathetic raptures. Long meles in praise of those who imperiled their lives for the sake of the suffering ones were droned to the dolorous accompaniment of mourners vociferously wailing among the tombs. It was when the foreign element, drawn thither by curiosity, had returned to town, when the sun had sunk into the golden flood and the rich twilight was melting into darkness, that the natives began to abandon themselves to those rites which we call heathen, and which, though forbidden by Christian law and to some extent obsolete, still sway them irresistibly in their more emotional moods. It was the hula-hula that alone satisfied them, and rhythmical refrains from a mythology that defies translation, and mysterious invocations to the unforgotten gods. Call it orgy if you will, there was in it an expression of feeling, momentary it may be, but nevertheless profound, and a display 236 HAWAIIAN LIFE of emotion that was contagious. The ecstasies of the dangers mingled strangely with the agonies of the bereaved, and when the music arid dancing had finally ceased and the sea seemed to have parted to let the multitude pass dry shod to the shore, there were those who lingered yet among the lonely graves, their foreheads prone upon the sand, their hearts broken and their throats hoarse with the howl of despair. Among these were some who came to weep for one who had passed too rapidly from the simplicity of the savage to the duplicity of civilized man. I had known him in his prime and in his degener- acy, and now I knew that somewhere among the bleaching, seawashed sands lay the bones of Kane-Pihi, who early fell a victim to the scourge. Nothing was more natural than that he should absorb the seeds of disease, for caution is unknown of his race and he would not be likely to desert a comrade in affliction. He took the smallpox with avidity and never for a moment, so I am credibly informed, thought of letting it go again. Fatalism was the foun dation of his faith and not all the Scriptures ON THE REEF 237 in Christendom could rob him of one jot or tittle of it. He could enjoy the religious diversions at Kaumakapili, and distinguish himself in the afterglow of the periodical revival; he could abandon his birthright of health, happiness and wholesome liberty for the shams which were offered him in their stead; he could play fast and loose, false and true with the best of them, for this art is easily acquired by the ingenious, and once acquired is never again forgotten or neglected; but he could not survive the great change the change of heart, the change of dirt and of air and water and all the elements, and he went to his death like a bird in a snare with- out so much as a hope of rescue. It chanced to be the smallpox that finished him; had it not been this doubtless it would shortly have been something else as unpremeditated. The luau the first, was perhaps not entirely appropriate, it is true; it may never recur on that lonely slip of sand, and if it should the bones of the dead will have been ground to powder in the pitiless mills of the sea; yet it cannot be said of him that he perished unwept, unhonored and unsung, and here is some 238 HAWAIIAN LIFE satisfaction in that. It was only the smallpox, but it was enough; I don't note the fact as being one of the evidences of Christianity as applied to the Hawaiian race, though for the most part Puritanism touches them like frost. The epidemic nearly precipitated the inevit- able climax. One has only to glance at a comparative table of the census during the last three score years, or to take the dimensions of the numerous and now almost vacant Protest- ant churches scattered through the length and the breadth of the land to draw a con- clusion by no means flattering to any Board of Missions. Having spied the gentlest of sav- ages out of the lonely sea for the purpose of teaching them how to die, the American Mis- sionary calmly folds his hands over the grave of the nation and turns his attention to affairs more private and peculiar XXX PL4NT4TION DAYS. T^O sail over placid seas in sight of my sum- mer islands; to lie off and on before the mouths of valleys that 1 have loved, where, in my youth, I have been in ecstasy; but never again to set foot on shore, or to know whether it be reality or a dream this is the dance my imagination leads me; this is the prelude to many an unrecorded souvenir. Why did I ever leave a land so paradisical? It grew too hot for me down in the tropics; everything I cared for withered, and all the juices within me simmered away; so in a moment of temporary sanity, I fled. But my heart, the vagabond, returns again to the green pastures of its youth, which reminds me: It was not yet day when the inter-island steamer from Honolulu, bound to the most windward of the Hawaiian Islands, came to anchor at Makena, a port that looks very 230 24O HAWAIIAN LIFE much as if a bite had been taken out of a not very appetizing sea-coast; but it is a port not to be despised in rough weather, for here the wind is tempered, and the sea during the prev- alence of the strong trade winds is far quieter than at Malaaea, a few miles over the stern rail. Here at Makena, under a fringe of the for- lornest palms conceivable, I debarked. Being an expected guest, I found a saddle-horse awaiting me in charge of an amiable guide, and without delay we began the ascent of Haleakala, the gigantic extinct crater, the largest in the world, beyond which the sun is hidden for two hours after he has begun his course. That is why the poetical aborigines have called the crater, Haleakala, the house of the sun, as if he rose literally from it, or out of it. With a cluck and a light touch of the spur, we dashed forward. Three rather dreary miles stretched between us and the haven of hospitality at Rose Ranch, two thousand feet above, and the day broke gloriously as we toiled up the slope through a wilderness of colossal cacti. Need I add, that the dust rose PLANTATION DAYS 24! long before the sun did, while our animal spirits and our not very spirited animals flagged beautifully in concert. Courage! There was the most restfullest kind of rest and the most refreshing refresh- ment ahead of us. The top end of the trail launched one into a deliciously cool atmos- phere, a lung bath full of healing, and from that semi-sublime elevation one looked back upon the earth and the sea in the superior mood that usually succeeds any difficulty well surmounted. Sparkling with the dew of the morning, Ulupalakua emerged as if by enchantment from a sea of clouds. Ulupalakua, Ripe breadfruit for the gods, was not thy melliflu- ously flowing, polytheistical; pictorial not to say spectacular, denomination as goodly a morsel upon the tongue as "Rose Ranch?" Bread-fruits were there in the old days, rare- ripe for the gods, and no doubt they were as acceptable as the roses that came in with the Christians, and the mosquitoes and all the other vermin to which civilization is the > undisputed heir. It was a ripe, bread-fruity, and god-like 242 HAWAIIAN LIFE morning when 1 1 first beheld Ulupalakua emerging from her maze of clouds. What clouds they were! Sometimes they overshad- owed her like a great downy wing; sometimes, but not often, they took possession of her, and her high hanging garden was drenched with fog. But her air is always of the purest, her mists of the whitest description, and her bowers breathe a delicate odor, the fragrance of which varies according to the floral calen- dar of the year. The hearty and homelike welcome at the gate was followed by a substantial breakfast, as soon as I had been given time to shake off the dust of travel; and then by easy stages was I suffered to drift on from one tranquil delight to another; those delights, somehow, growing more and more tranquil, but' none the less delightful as they multiplied. I write of Halcyonian Hawaii, of the days that are no more, and have not been for a very long time. In my mind's eye is a vision typical of the period, one peculiar to the west- ern slope of Haleakala, even in those days of royal hospitality; one never again to be known in that degenerated kingdom. This is what I see: PLANTATION DAYS 243 The long table in the long, long dining hall, stretched to its utmost and filled with naval guests. ' The host who through the somewhat formal dinner has wielded the car- ver with unruffled composure, albeit a very magnificent Admiral is enthroned on his right hand the host is heartily commended when the viands are removed, and the cloth dis- played in all its original purity. It is the Admiral who calls attention to his host's skill; of course the Admiral's suite echoes the Admiral, and the applause which has become general heightens the color in the cheek of the carver. I believe we have no guest on this occasion less distinguished than the companions of the wardroom, but the never to be forgotten mid- dies have a brief outing and a banquet some- what later in the week, Now the Admiral, being both on shore and on very good terms with himself, wishes to stake his ship at anchor in the harbor of Makena just under the mountain that the Captain-host at Ulupalakua is qualified to carve a peacock at a Roman feast; in fact, to carve a peacock among magnificent signers 244 HAWAIIAN LIFE here the Admiral's forefinger tapped lightly upon the Admiral's brow such as had "their pheasants drenched with ambergris; and the carcasses of three fat wethers bruised for gravy to make sauce for a single peacock!" A responsive chorus of approval from the guests at table, a double broadside as it were, follows this gallant speech, with its fine, old- school quotation. It is now the Captain's turn, and with the smile that flatters its author and lends him the air of one peering from giddy heights, he replies complacently enough: "Gentlemen, the birds you have just eaten were peacocks!" By this time, wine and cigars being in order, the whole company turns with enthu- siasm upon the host, and for awhile the con- versation takes on a pronounced peacock tinge. "By the bye," says the Admiral, with a drawl and an eyeglass that silence every tongue, "I believe I have never seen a pea- cock with his tail spread, unless he were on a. screen, or upon the title page of a polka!" If this is a surprising concession on the part PLANTATION DAYS 245 of a naval dignitary, it is likewise a reproof for the bird. "We have musters of them here," adds the Captain, still reveling in his smile; "pray satisfy yourself that the tail is not a fable." With this he leads the way to a long row of mau&a-wmdows, and there upon the up- sloping lawn for mauka^ in soft Hawaiian, means toward the mountain there a score of the foolish fowls are strutting in the pomp of their splendid plumage. It is as if the Great Mogul had sent an embassy to treat with us; or, as if an Arabian night had sud- denly turned into day. Huge feathery disks are shimmering in the sun, now near its setting : the silken rustle of agitated plumage, the indignant rivalry, the amazing pomposity, the arrogance and conceit of the silly birds, whose bosoms are aglow with phosphorescent beauty, draw shouts of admiration and astonishment from the bewildered guests. Is it a sun- burst, or a feast of fuss and feathers ? The clashing of the imperious rivals begins to be alarming. Heaven knows what might have happened but for the timely appearance of a pet dog upon the scene, when, with a shriek 246 HAWAIIAN LIFE of dismay, the whole muster takes wing, fill- ing the air with discordant cries. As I recall this Ulupalakua of that period, it seems to me that everything pertaining to plantation life was done upon an impressive scale. At the time I write of, the ladies of the family, numbering a half-dozen or more, were at the roomy town house in Honolulu, or at the Coast as California is familiarly styled. The Captain had left the capital to escort the Admiral to Makena and do the honors of the plantation, while the flagship lay in port. Ulupalakua hospitality began as soon as a. foot was set on shore. There were "cattle" enough at command to horse a company of cavalry, and to stay the stomachs of a British regiment with the traditional roast. The slaughter under axe and saddle was bloody for Jack Tar is a merciless rider and has a salt air appetite yet the flocks and herds seemed never to decrease upon the hills. The homestead was open wide at all times and seasons. It was a one-storied, rambling mother-house, with many wings and angles; about it were clustered numerous cottages of PLANTATION DAYS 247 various dimensions such cozy cottages as bachelors delight in each quite independent of the others, and having a leafy screen and an atmosphere of its own. At night every chamber of every house was lighted, so that the bounteous garden in the midst of the set- tlement was suffused with the glow of good cheer. On a plateau above the garden was the billiard-hall, and some little distance beyond it, though not so far away but in the still afternoon a muffled peal on peal was faintly audible even in the select silence of the pri- vate chapel stretched the long bowling alley. Between billiards and bowls lay the elysian fields, a tennis court of velvety perfection. Probably business preceded pleasure, even at Ulupalakua, but it took precedence with such modest grace that the latter seemed the more honored. Everywhere one saw evidences of practical activity, for method was the Captain's mania; but over all, especially in guest-time, pleasure played like a smile. Cartwheels groaned to the music of ballad singing drivers; and the steam whistle down at the sugar mill was hardly more pronounced than the matutinal crash of ten-pins. 248 HAWAIIAN LIFE I can see them now, the blue jackets off duty, improving the shining hours with an earnestness that might put a bee to the blush; for between the side-board and the siesta, time flew with the speed of a six- winged seraph. The ladies were indeed absent on the auspicious occasion above referred to, and it were folly to say that they were not regretted; but in this picturesque period a household like the one under consideration seemed almost to take care of itself. Ulupalakua was origin- ally the best exemplification of the patriarchal system in the whole kingdom; a system that came in with the American Missionaries, and has now become one of the fond traditions of Island life. From the veriest child that was destined to grow up and probably end his days on the plantation, to the old fellow who passed his declining years upon the lawn, with a low camp-stool and a pair of scissors, clipping the grass blades as they grew from day to day, and his antiquated wife whose sole duty was to shoot the peacocks at intervals, the various member of the community looked upon the Captain's word as absolute. The PLANTATION DAYS 249 innumerable plantation hands were like mem- bers of one family; you could have ordered almost anyone within sight to do your bid- ding, and it was done as a matter of course. The fourth of July was the great holiday of the year, for the spirit of liberty is catching. As the Captain was a staunch American, the stars and stripes floated from the flag-staffs before the homestead .and the plantation office, and from, the peaks of a private packet that plied between the ports of Makena and Honolulu. She was a trim schooner yacht that was in no wise afraid to try her speed with the old inter-island steamer, the Kilauea in any sort of weather, save only a dead calm. But let me not cast a reproach upon the memory of the Kilaiica; she is said to have whetted her keel upon every reef in those treacherous waters; and when, after long years of faithful service, she was condemned, it required the aid of powder to dismember her; yet if the prayers of the wicked the uncomfortable passengers could avail aught, she would probably have gone to the bottom at a much earlier period in her career. O happy past! What a blessing it is that pleasant memories are immortal ! 25O HAWAIIAN LIFE When the young ladies were at the home- steadj and the guest chambers unoccupied- it sometimes so happened even at Ulupalakua there came a cry from the garden, a pitiful and despairing cry "Oh, sister, do you see a dust ?" Then the sister, two or three of her, probably, responded from the housetop "No!" Or perhaps the marine glass was turned upon the far distant horizon seeking for a sail "No sail from day to day." Only once a week was there hope of the mail gladdening us; as news from the outer world in that dim age came at such uncertain intervals, that all business was suspended when it did arrive, until the thrice welcome letters were read and re-read, and reluctantly laid away for innu- merable re-readings. When the sisters came down from the house- top, having abandoned the seas in despair, the piano was played more wildly; the balls shot madly from their spheres in the billiard hall ; while the court grew positively perilous: sometimes, in desperation, the cnnuiecs dashed over the hills at break-neck speed on the backs of broncos that were but half broken. Yet the Navy was not so shy of us in those PLANTATION DAYS 251 days: there was nearly always a glimmer of brass buttons in the tableaux of social life. Ah, me! Many a youthful mariner, beautiful in broadcloth, gorgeous in gold lace, and surcharged with those graceful accomplish- ments that are forever associated with the aspiring off-shoots of Annapolis, found his way as if by instinct into the rose-garden of Ulupalakua; the shadows of the kamani avenue were known to him, and in its kukui grove, under the lee of Puumahoe, he has left his heart firmly imbedded in the impres- sionable bark of some love-nourishing tree. If he has not, it is because he was not up to the high-water mark of the Navy. When the social resources of the place were exhausted, and not till then, was the Admiral of the peacock's episode permitted to hon- orably withdraw from the siege of Ulupa- lakua. Meanwhile Jack-tar had been relish- ing his barbacued beef down at Makena-by- the-sea, and had not had half a bad time, though the port is undoubtedly a dull one between meals. The sun had set nightly with great eclat a sunset was one of the features of our enter- 252 HAWAIIAN LIFE tainment. The magnolias had filled their alabaster bowls with moonlight of the first quality moonlight that ran over and flooded the whole Island, Hawaiian singers had sung themselves hoarse under the verandas o' nights. The clouds had come down they had not far to come and put a damper on the season of festivity. It was evidently about time for the Admiral to steam back to the capital, if he would escape a threatening gale, and that he did one morning, taking his host along with him as a souvenir of his very jolly experience. Then followed a season of reaction and convalescence, during which I was quite alone in my glory the greater part of the day. Transient guests, making the tour of the island, dropped in upon us and dropped out again without causing so much as a ripple on the peaceful surface of life's stream. The latchstring hung within the reach of every one, and I regret to add, even in the halcyo- nian age this gracious hospitality was some- times abused. As for myself, a favored guest at all times, I had books without number many of them PLANTATION DAYS 2 53 choice ones, such as one even nowadays may occasionally stumble upon among the private libraries scattered throughout the kingdom. Then there was the piano in the parlor, a choice one; another in the school-room, where one could indulge his taste for melodi- ous calisthenics; an organ in the chapel, and a collection of portable instruments scattered about the place. There were romantic trails to be tracked only in the saddle on saddle horses and saddles of every possible descrip- tion. There was pigeon-shooting in the cavern, half way down the mountain slope but the birds were much too tame for sport, and we seldom fluttered them. A cattle drive was one of the more exciting pastimes, and in this all joined with enthu- siasm even the ladies sometimes amazoned our party. If you desire, Oh reader! to witch the world with noble horsemanship, let me see how you manage a mustang during a stampede in those vast orchards of prickly- pear, and I will answer for your chances in the game of witchery. Wild cattle stand not upon the order of their going, and they are as nimble though 254 HAWAIIAN LIFE not as light-footed as goats when they once get started for the jungle, where they vanish in a cloud of dust. Though the cactus is like a rack full of reversed pin-cushions never was there a more formidable cheval defrise yet the cattle plunge among them with fear- less abandon and even munch barbed thorns with amazing relish. Ah, me! but my season of solitude was a rare delight, and the frequent divertisement a never-failing source of refreshment. From books, moused out of a deep, dark closet, where they had been stored and long since forgotten, old books, with freckled pages and a faint musty door that I found positively intoxicating, to the bowling alley, was the giddy flight I took when so disposed. It was a unique game of ten-pins I was wont to play in those days. Small natives swarmed like bees whenever I went abroad ; you see I was the one haoli or foreigner who had unlimited leisure, and they knew not at what moment it might suit my fancy to embark upon some erratic expedition such as they delighted in. At a moment's notice I could command a troop of horses worthy of PLANTATION DAYS 255 an outlaw chief. If I retired to the billiard hall to amuse myself with the light and airy cue, the windows and doors commanding the four sides of the table were certain to be darkened with a cloud of witnesses but I am forgetting the ten-pins. There was a small kanaka for every pin, and one for each ball; these in some myste- rious way hung upon the wall at the far and fatal end of the bowling alley, at the immi- nent peril of life and limb. Whenever I made a ten strike, which I positively did occasion- ally, it was invariably received with a deafen- ing round of cheers not omitting the "tiger": but still I was not happy, for I always feared to find the alley, after the atmosphere had cleared a little, strewn with Hawaiian slain. Many and various changes have taken place since my first visit to Ulupalakua. Then the summer breezes sighed in the white plumed cane fields as the busy ox carts were laboring up and down the winding road from dawn to dusk. There was a whole village full of plantation hands a kind of happy family village, peopled with mixed races whose nationalities ranged from Japan almost to the Antarctic, and lapped clean around the world. 256 HAWAIIAN LIFE Cane-planting was the Captain's business, but tree planting was his pleasure. I know not how many thousand saplings were rooted under his very eyes many of them he set out with his own hands. There were acres and acres of choice cuttings; they crowned the hill-tops and filled the beds of valleys not otherwise engaged. He watched their growth with ceaseless and loving care. We used to ride among the shrubs when they were scarcely up to our stirrups, and he would talk of his plans for the future; not those plans that had to do with the sugar market, or were in any way material or sordid, but only such as fed his fancy and aided him to picture the mag- nificent estate that was his delightful hobby as it would appear in after years. In his mind's eye he saw a tropical garden in the midst of Alpine groves, upon a plateau possessing singular climatic advantages, and commanding breadths of earth, sea, and sky a panorama of marvelous variety and beauty. Comparative isolation was in this instance a blessing. Had it been advisable, the Captain could at any moment block his highways with sharp-shooters, read the PLANTATION DAYS 257 Declaration of Independence, and look down serenely upon the little kingdom that swam and sweltered below him. His people were loyal to a man and this spirit of loyalty was easily warmed to enthusiasm; sentiment is one of the prominent characteristics of the Hawaiian race and there is something in the soft atmosphere of these favored islands, the melting humidity, the permeating frag- rance, the sensuous warmth, and the surpris- ing beauty bursting at intervals upon the enraptured vision, that nourishes thevoluptu- ous element in our nature, and encourages an easy inclination to sentimentality. There were natives in the Captain's employ whose parents were born on the premises, and whose children are likely to pass their lives there Though the Hawaiian has acquired a taste for travel, he is passionately attached to his native heath, and formerly he was easily content to dwell at home and let the world go by. At Ulupalakua there was a venerable coolie the tyrant of the kitchen, but fondly indulgent when the little ones appeared who had served the Captain's family faithfully for thirty years; when his master died he 258 HAWAIIAN LIFE redoubled his devotion to his mistress; but when her body also was borne to the family mausoleum on the hill overhanging the sea, he threw himself upon his cot and never again left it alive. These are traditions of past; one does but dream of them nowadays. The modern serv- ant is a hireling a mercenary fellow with an eye single to his sole advantages. Moreover the entertainer's wits are sharpened, his heart is hardened, and doubtless for good and suffi- cient reasons. Often he was imposed upon in the old days when the veriest stranger was welcomed with a cordiality worthy of an angelic guest. Now there are public lodg- ings to be obtained for hire on most of the thoroughfares, and the calculating Caucasians ready to serve one with the best the provin- cial market affords, at a price just within the bounds of reason. Rose Ranch has ever been a paradise in the imaginations of those who were beginning to succumb under the monotonous high tem- perature of the lowlands. They dream of nights in which woolen blankets, and several of them, are indispensable to comfort; and of PLANTATION DAYS 259 evenings when, at some seasons of the year, a blazing hearth is the chief attraction of the place; they think of days that dawn in another zone, as it were, where temperate fruits are ruddying and ripening; yet from under the shadow of those olive boughs the eye of contemplation kindles at the vision of glowing sands, by glittering silver sea, where palm groves nod and quiver in the heat and then they weep with longing. The startling notes of unfamiliar birds are heard there at intervals, for the forests are haunted by the shy progeny of the imported songsters who are for the most part too home- sick to sing. Once in a while a paroquet flutters in the edge of the garden, but the green solitudes farther up the heights afford superior attractions. Even the mynah, that feathered bohemian of the far East, finds the groves of Honolulu a fitter field for his gipsyism, and Ulupalakua resounds to the trumpet blast of the peacock; but for these highly decorative birds, that troop in hundreds over the abund- ant acres, the quiet of the Rose Ranch of today would take on a somber tinge; for the sound of the grinding is low, and the herds 26O HAWAIIAN LIFE that abound there, if they have not a thous- and hills to feed upon, have yet ample room in which to wander and browse, and they are for the most part out of sight and sound. The bowling alley long since was blown down in a gale, and its forgotten debris lies buried under moss and creepers, awaiting the enterprising pick of some future archaeologist. Tennis survives, and is likely to be perpetu- ated; a game in which feminine grace and masculine agility are striving for victory, while the looker-on has only to approve with equal fervor and discrimination, is sure of honorable mention while youth and beauty disport upon the lawn. Prospect Hill, which was a nursery when the Captain and I used to climb it, is now a wood worthy to be called umbrageous; while the. row of solemn cypresses, the funereal urns and the sad paths that surround the mauso- leum, forcibly remind one of the terraces in a Florentine villa. Yet this is not a melancholy spot, even for those who remember the gayeties of the past; and if I dwell more upon the soft cadence of the evening breeze the caress of drooping PLANTATION DAYS 26 1 boughs, and the silent showers of rose petals in the unvisited arbor, than upon the jollity of the season, it is because these are charac- teristic of Ulupalakua in repose, a repose singularly grateful to a disquieted soul. And these charms will lead one ever to think of the place and to speak of it very much in the spirit of Peter Martyr, who thus wrote long ago of the queen's garden in the Antilles: "Never was any noisome animal found there, nor yet any ravaging four-footed beast, nor lion, nor bear, nor fierce tigers, nor crafty foxes, nor devouring wolves, but all things blessed and fortunate." . . . XXXI THE DRAMA IN DREAM-LAND. TT is from the seaward window of the United States Legation in Honolulu that I have of late cast a pathetic eye. The "tear of sym- pathy" may not flow as freely in recent liter- ature as was its custom in the age of more reverent readers and writers; but there is something in the forlorn beauty of the wilder- ness over against the Legation that conjures the obsolete globule above referred to, and I shed it fearlessly and not without reason. Upon the diagonal corner of the street stands the new hall of the Young Men's Christian Association, smelling of bricks and mortar; over the way is a tenement where plain board and lodging entice the stranger under a disguise of fresh paint; these are both innovations necessary, no doubt, to the requirements of a progressive age; but the occasion of my present solicitude is a vacant 262 THE DRAMA IN DREAM-LAND 263 corner lot, trimly fenced, wherein two rows of once stately palms now struggle with decay and the unpruned parasites that fatten on it. It is a weird garden, where Flora and Thespis once held friendly rivalry. What a jumble of botanical debris and histrionic rub- bish now litters the arena flanked by forlorn palms ! Out of it all I doubt if the sentimental scavenger would be able to pick any relic more substantial than the airy dagger of Macbeth; but upon points so slight as this hang imper- ishable memories; hence follow these remi- niscences of the late Royal Hawaiian Theater. Well nigh a score of years ago I was loung- ing at Whitney's bookstore in Honolulu; it was at that time a kind of Hawaiian Forum, with a postoffice on one side of the room and a semaphore on the roof. Dull work in those days, waiting for the gaunt arms of the semi- phore to swing about, uttering cabalistical prophecies "No sail from day to day." No steamers then to stain the brilliant sky with trailing smoke; the mail-days depended entirely upon the state of the wind and the tide. I was weary of fumbling the shop-worn 264 HAWAIIAN LIFE books, of listening or trying not to listen to the roar of the rollers on the reef; woefully weary of the tepid monotony that offered not even an excuse for irritation. Upon this mood entered a slender but well proportioned gentleman, clad in white linen raiment, spotless and well starched; there was something about him which would have caused the most casual observer to give him a second glance a mannerism and an air that distinguished him. A professional, probably, thought I; an eccentric, undoubtedly. I was not surprised when, upon the entrance of a common friend a few moments later, I was made acquainted with Mr. Proteus, proprietor and manager of the Royal Hawaiian Theater, likewise government botanist and professor of many branches of art both sacred and pro- fane. Mr. Proteus bowed somewhat in the manner of a French dancing-master, and shuddered slightly upon being shaken by the hand; at a latter date he requested me never to repeat a formality which he could not but consider quite unnecessary in general and in most cases highly objectionable. After having cautiously exchanged a few L THE DRAMA IN DREAM-LAND -265 languid commonplaces, Mr. Proteus invited me to visit his Temple of the Muses. Noth- ing could have pleased me better. I regarded him as a godsend, and we at once repaired to the theater, threading the blazing streets together under a huge umbrella of dazzling whiteness, held jauntily by my new-found friend. I like theaters; I dote on dingy tinsel and stucco which in a flash of light is transformed into brilliant beauty; and the odor, the unmistakable odor, of stale foot-lights and thick coats of distemper; the suggestive con- fusion of flats and wings and flies; the pict- uresque bric-a-brac of the property-room; the trap-doors, the slides, the grooves, the stuffy dressing-rooms, and the stray play-bills pasted here and there in memory of gala- nights in the past. Of all the theaters that I have known, this was the most theatrical, because the most unreal; it was like a make- believe theater, wherein everything was done for the fun of it; a kind of child's toy theater grown up, and full of grown-up players, who, by an enchantment which was the sole right of this house, became like children the 266 HAWAIIAN LIFE moment they set foot upon that stage; and there, people and players were as happy and careless as children so long as one stone of that play-house stood upon another. We turned into Alakea Street, a pastoral lane in those days; the grass was parted down the middle of it by a trail of dust; strange trees waved blossoming branches over us. I looked up: in the midst of a beautiful garden stood a quaint, old-fashioned building; but for its surroundings I might easily have mis- taken it for a primitive, puritanical, New Eng- land village meeting-house; long windows, of the kind that slide down into a third of their natural height, were opened to the breeze; great dragon-flies sailed in and out at leisure. The theater fronted upon a street more traveled and more pretentious than the one we entered, and from that street a flight of steps led to a door which might have opened into the choir-loft if this had really been a meeting-house; but as it was nothing of the sort, the door at the top of the stairs admitted you without a moment's notice to the dress circle; bees and butterflies lounged about it; THE DRAMA IN DREAM-LAND 267 every winged thing had the entree of this establishment. With Proteus I approached the stage door; tufts of long grass trailed over the three broad wooden steps before the mysterious portal; luxuriant creepers festooned the casement; small lizards, shining with metallic luster, slid into convenient crevices as we drew near. A faint delicious fragrance was wafted from the garden, where a native lad with spouting hose in hand was showering a broad-leafed plant, upon which the falling water boomed like a drum; it was the only sound that broke the soothing silence. Proteus produced a key, and with a flourish applied it to the lock; the door swung in upon the stage (no dingy and irregular passage intervened) the cozy stage flooded with sun- shine, from which the mimic scenes had been swept back against the wall, and the space filled to the proscenium with trapeze, rings, bars, and spring-boards; in brief, the theater had been transformed into a gymnasium between two dramatic seasons. The body of the house was in its normal condition the pit filled with rude benches; a 268 HAWAIIAN LIFE piano stood under the foot-lights (it usually comprised the orchestra); thin partitions, about shoulder high, separated the two ends of the dress-circle, and the spaces were known as boxes. A half-dozen real kings and queens had witnessed the lives and deaths of player- kings and queens from these queer little cubby-holes. Folding doors thrown wide open in the rear of the stage admitted us to the green-room a pretty parlor well furnished with bachelor comforts. The large center-table was cov- ered with a rich Turkish tapestry; on it stood an antique astral lamp with a depressed globe and a tall, slender stem; handsome mirrors, resting upon carved and gilded consoles, extended to the ceiling; statuettes and vases were placed before them; lounges, Chinese reclining-chairs, and ottomans encumbered the floor; a valuable oil-painting which had a look of age hung over the piano; on the latter stood two deep, bell-shaped globes of glass that protected wax tapers from the trop- ical drafts; a double window, which was ever open to the trade-wind was thickly screened by vines. On one side of this exceptional THE DRAMA IN DREAM-LAND 269 green-room (it was in reality the boudoir of the erratic Proteus) was a curtained arch, and within it the sleeping apartment of him who had for years made the theater his home. On the other side of the room was a bath supplied with a flowing stream of fresh, cool mountain water. Beneath the stage were all the kitchen wares that heart or stomach could desire. And thus was the drama nourished in Dream-land before the antipodes had lost their reserve. Proteus was an extremist in all things, capa- ble of likes and dislikes as violent as they were sudden and unaccountable; we became fast friends at once, and it was my custom to lounge under the window in the green-room hour after hour, while he talked of the vicissi- tudes in his extraordinary career, or related episodes in the dramatic history of his house a history which dated back to 1848; some of these were romantic, some humorous or grotesque, but all were alike of interest to me. Honolulu has long been visited by musi- cal and dramatic celebrities, for they are a nomadic tribe. As early as 1850, Steve Mas- sett "Jeems Pipes of Pipesville" was con- certizing here, and again in 1878. In 1855 2/0 HAWAIIAN LIFE Kate Hayes gave concerts at three dollars per ticket; Lola Montez and Madame Ristori have visited this capital, but not profession- ally. In 1852 Edwin Booth played in that very theater, and for a time lived in it, after the manner of Proteus; among those who have followed him are Charles Mathews, Herr Bandmann, Walter Montgomery, Madame Marie Duret, Signor and Signora Bianchi, Signer Orlandini, Madame Agatha States, Madame Eliza Biscaccianti, Madame Joseph- ine d'Ormy, J. C. Williamson and Maggie Moore, Professor Anderson, "The Wizard of the North,'' Madame Anna Bishop in 1857 and 1868, lima di Murksa, the Carrandinis, the Zavistowskis, Charlie Backus, Joe Murphy, Billy Emerson, etc. As for panoramas, magi- cians, glass-blowers, and the like, their number and variety are confounding. The experiences of these clever people while here must have been delightful ,to most of them; though the professional who touches for a few hours or a few days only at this tropical oasis in the sea-desert on his way to or from Australia will hardly realize the senti- mental sadness of those who have gone down into the Pacific to astonish the natives, and THE DRAMA IN DREAM-LAND have found it no easy task to get over the reef again at the close of a disastrous season. The hospitality of the hospitable people is not always equal to such an emergency; but there are those who have returned again to Dream- land, and who have longed for it ever since they first discovered that play-acting is not all work in one thea'ter, at least. That marvelously young old man, the late Charles Mathews, who certainly had a right to be world-weary if any one has, out of the fullness of his heart wrote the following on his famous tour in 187374: "At Honolulu, one of the loveliest little spots upon earth" he was fresh from the gorgeous East when he wrote that from the Indies, luminous in honor of the visit of the Prince of Wales "I acted one night by com- mand and in the presence of His Majesty Kamehameha V., King of the Sandwich Islands not Hoky Poky Wanky Fun, as erroneously reported; and a memorable night it was. "I found the theater to use a technical expression crammed to suffocation, which merely means very full; though, from the state of the thermometer on this occasion, 2/2 HAWAIIAN LIFE suffocation wasn't so incorrect a description as usual. "A really elegant-looking audience; tickets ten shillings each; evening dresses, uniforms of every cut and country; chiefesses and ladies of every tinge in dresses of every color; flowers and jewels in profusion, satin play- bills, fans going, windows and doors all open, an outside staircase leading straight into the dress-circle, without check-taker or money- taker. "Kanaka women in the garden below selling bananas and peanuts by the glare of flaming torches on a sultry, tropical moonlight night. "The whole thing was like nothing but a midsummer night's dream. "And was it nothing to see a whole pit full of Kanakas, black, brown, and whity-brown, till lately cannibals, showing their teeth, and enjoying 'Patter versus Clatter' as much as a few years ago they would have enjoyed the roasting of a missionary or the baking of a baby? "It was certainly a page in one's life never to be forgotten." Let me add that Mr. Mathews is more amusing than authentic; cannibalism is THE DRAMA IN DREAM-LAND 273 unknown in the annals of the Hawaiian king- dom; if there has been any human roasting done in this domain, it has been done since the arrival of the American missionaries. That little play-house was in its day thronged by audiences attracted by very dis- similar entertainments; anything from five acts and a prologue of melo-drama to a troupe of trained poodles was sure to transform the grassy lane into a bazaar of fruit-sellers, and the box-office under the stairs into a bedlam of chattering natives. One heard almost as well outside as within the building; the high windows were down from the top, because air was precious and scarce; banana leaves fluttered like cambric curtains before them; if a familiar air was struck upon the piano in the orchestra, the Kanakas lying in the grass under the garden fence took up the refrain and hummed it softly and sweetly; the music ceased, the play began, the listeners in the street, seeing no part of the stage little, in fact, save the lamp-light streaming through the waving banana leaves busied themselves with talk; they buzzed like swarming bees, they laughed like careless children, they echoed the applause of the spectators, and 2/4 HAWAIIAN LIFE amused themselves mightily. Meanwhile, the royal family was enjoying the play in the most natural and unpretentious fashion. Perhaps it was an abbreviated version of a Shakesperian tragedy primitively played by a limited company; or it may have been the garden scene from "Romeo and Juliet," wherein Juliet leaned from a balcony embow- ered with palms and ferns transplanted from the garden for this night only, and making a picture of surpassing loveliness. Everybody in that house knew everybody else; a solitary stranger would have been at once discovered and scrutinized It was like a social gathering, where, indeed, "carriages may be ordered at 10:30;" but most of the participants walked home Who would not have walked home through streets that are like garden paths very much exaggerated; where the melodious Kanaka seeks in vain to out sing the tireless cricket, and both of them are overcome by the lugubrious double-bass of the sea? But to Proteus once more: when social dinners ceased to attract, when the boarding- house grew tedious and the Chinese restau- rant became a burden, he repaired to the cool THE DRAMA IN DREAM-LAND 2/5 basement under the stage, a kind of culinary laboratory, such as amateurs in cookery delight in, and there he prepared the daintiest dishes, and we often partook of them in Crusoe-like seclusion. Could anything be jollier? Sweetmeats and semi-solitude, and the Kanaka with his sprinkler to turn on a tropical shower at the shortest notice. This 'youth was a shining example of the ingen- uousness of his race; he had orders to water the plants at certain hours daily; and one day we found him in the garden under an umbrella, playing the hose in opposition to a heavy rain storm. His fidelity established him permanently in his master's favor. Many strange characters found shelter under that roof: Thespian waifs thrown upon the mosquito shore, who, perhaps, rested for a time, and then set sail again; prodigal circus boys, disabled and useless, deserted by their fellows, here bided their time, basking in the hot sunshine, feeding on the locusts and wild honey of idleness, and at last, falling in with some troupe of strolling athletes, have dashed again into the glittering ring with new life, a new name, and a new blaze of spangles; the sadness of many a twilight in Honolulu has 2/6 HAWAIIAN LIFE been intensified by the melancholy picking of the banjo in the hands of some dejected min- strel. All these conditions touched us simi- larly. Reclining in the restful silence of that room, it was our wont to philosophize over glasses of lemonade nothing stronger than this, for Proteus was of singularly temperate appetites; and there I learned much of those whom I knew not personally, and saw much of some whom I might elsewhere have never met. One day he said to me: "You like music; come with me arid you shall hear such as is not often heard." We passed down the pretty lane upon which the stage door opened, and approached the sea; almost upon the edge of it, and within sound of the ripples that lapped lazily the coral frontage of the esplanade, we turned into a bakery and inquired for the baker's lady. < She was momentarily expected. We were shown into an upper room scantily furnished, and from a frail balcony that looked unable to support us we watched the coming of a portly female in a short frock, whose gait was masculine, and her tastes likewise, for she was smoking a large and handsomely colored meerschaum; THE DRAMA IN DREAM-LAND 2/7 a huge dog, dripping sea water at every step, walked demurely by her side. Recognizing Proteus, who stood somewhat in fear of her, for she was bulky and boisterous, she hailed him with a shout of welcome that might have been heard a block away. This was Madame Jospehine d'Ormy, whose operatic career began in America long ago in Castle Garden, and ended disastrously in San Francisco. Her adventures by land and sea she was once shipwrecked will not be dwelt on here. Enough that she laid aside her pipe, saluted Proteus with an emphasis that raised him a full foot from the floor, and learning that I was from San Francisco, she embraced me with emotion; she could not speak of that city without sobbing. Placing herself at an instrument it looked like an aboriginal melodeon the legs of which were so feeble that the body of it was lashed with hempen cord to rings screwed into the floor, she sang, out of a heart that seemed utterly broken, a song which was like the cry of a lost soul. Tears jetted from her eyes and splashed upon her ample bosom; the instrument quaked under her vigorous pumping of the 278 HAWAIIAN LIFE pedals; it was a question whether to laugh or to weep a hysterical moment but the case she speedily settled by burying her face in her apron and trumpeting sonorously; upon which, bursting into a hilarious ditty, she reiterated with hoarse "ha, ha's," that ended in shrieks of merriment, "We'll laugh the blues away!" and we did. This extraordinary woman, whose voice, in spite of years of dissipation, had even to the end a charm of its own, came to her death in San Francisco at the hands of a brute who was living upon the wages she drew for play- ing the piano in a beer-cellar. Then there was Madame Marie Duret, who, having outlived the popularity of her once famous "Jack Sheppard," would doubtless have ended her days in Dream-land chaper- oning the amateurs, and probably braving the tootlights herself at intervals, for she was well preserved. But alas! there was a flaw in the amenities, and she fled to worse luck. She went to California, fighting poverty and paralysis with an energy and good nature for which she was scarcely rewarded. A mere handful of friends, and most of those recent ones, saw her decently interred. THE DRAMA IN DREAM-LAND 279 And mad, marvelous Walter Montgomery, with his sensational suicide in the first quar- ter of a honey-moon. He used to ride a prancing horse in Honolulu, a horse that was a whole circus in itself, and scatter handfuls of small coin to and fro just for the fun of seeing the little natives scramble for it. And Madame Biscaccianti poor soul ! the thorn was never from the breast of that night- ingale. After the bitterest sorrows mingled with the brilliantest triumphs, did she, I won- der, find comfortable obscurity in Italy a compensation for all her sufferings? At last she sleeps in her unvisited grave. Sleep well, old friend! Proteus himself had, perhaps, the most uncommon history of all. This he related one evening when we were in the happiest mood; there was a panorama dragging its slow length along before an audience attracted, no doubt, as much by the promise of numer- ous and costly gifts, of a sum total far out stripping the receipts of the house, as by the highly colored pictorial progress of Bunyan's famous Pilgrim. We had been lounging in the royal box, and, growing weary of the entertainment, especially weary of a barrel- 280 HAWAIIAN LIFE organ that played at the heels of Christian through all his tribulation, we repaired to the green-room, and somehow fell to talking of individual progress, and of the pack we each of us must carry through storm and shine. Proteus evidently began his story without premeditation; it was not a flowing narrative; there were spurts of revelation interrupted at intervals by the strains ot the barrel-organ, from which there was no escape. Later, I was able to follow the thread of it, joining it here and there, for he himself had become interested, and he had frequent recourse to a diary which he had stenographed after his own fashion, and the key of which no one but he possessed. He was of New England parentage, born in 1826; as a youth, was delicate and effem- inate ; was gifted with many accomplishments, sketched well, sang well, played upon several instruments, and was, withal, an uncommon linguist. He was a great lover of nature. His knowledge was varied and very accurate; he was an authority upon most subjects which interested him at all, was a botanist of repute, had a smattering of many sciences, and was correct as far as he went in them. THE DRAMA IN DREAM-LAND 28 1 He lost his father in infancy, and his train- ing was left to tutors; he was a highly imag- inative dreamer, and romantic in the extreme; for this reason, and having never known a father's will, he left home in his youth, and was for some years a wanderer, seeking, it was thought, an elder brother, who had long since disappeared. He was in California in early days, in Hawaii, Australia, and Tahiti; the love of adventure grew upon him; he learned to adapt himself to all circumstances. Though not handsome he was well propor- tioned and possessed of much muscular grace He traveled for a time with a circus, learned to balance himsef on a globe, to throw double- summersaults, and to do dating trapeze-flights in the peak of the tent. Growing weary of this, and having already known and become enamored of Hawaii, he returned to the islands, secured the Royal Hawaiian Theater and began life anew. His collection of botan- ical plants surrounding the theater was excep- tionally rich and a source of profit to him; but the theater was his hobby, and he rode it to the last. Nothing seemed quite impossible to him upon the stage; anything from light comedy 282 HAWAIIAN LIFE to eccentric character parts were in his line ; the prima donna in burlesque opera was a favorite assumption; nor did he, exit of the love of his art, disdain to dance the wench- dance in a minstrel show; he had even a circus of his own; but his off hours were employed in his garden or with pupils whom he instructed in music, dancing, fencing, box- ing, gymnastics, and I know not what else. On one occasion he took with him to Cali- fornia a troupe of Hawaiian hula-hula dancers, the only ones who have gone abroad profes- sionally, and his experiences with these peo- ple, whose language he had made his own, and with whom he was in full sympathy, would fill a volume. Their singular super- stitions; the sacrifices of pig and fowl which he had at times to permit them to make in order to appease their wrathful gods; the gypsy life they led in the interior of the State, where, apart from the settlements, they would camp by a stream in some canon and live for a little while the life of their beloved islands; the insults they received in the up-country towns from the civilized whites, who like wild beasts fell upon them, and finally succeeded in demoralizing and disbanding the troupe; THE DRAMA IN DREAM-LAND 283 these episodes he was fond of enlarging upon, and his fascinating narrative was enliv- ened with much highly original and humorous detail. Through all his vicissitudes he preserved a refinement which was remarked by every one who knew him. He was the intimate of the late Kings Lunalillo I., and Kalakaua L, and of many Hawaiians of rank; he had danced in the royal set at court-balls; was a member and correspondent of several scientific soci- eties; a man of the most eccentric descrip- tion; greatly loved by a few, intensely dis- liked by many, and perhaps fully understood by no one. He had learned to hate the world, and at times to irritate himself very much over it; doubtless he had cause. My last night in the little theater was the pleasantest of all. The play was over; dur- ing its action great ruby-eyed moths with scarlet spots like blood-drops on their wings flew through the windows and dove headlong into the foot-lights, where they suffered mar- tyrdom, and eventually died to slow music; and then the rain came and beat upon that house, and it leaked; but umbrellas were not prohibited; the shower was soon over; we 284 HAWAIIAN LIFE shook our locks like spaniels, and laughed again; and it was all very tropical. Late in the night Proteus and I were sup- ping in the green-room, when he told me in a stage whisper how night after night, when the place was as black as a tomb, he had heard a light footfall, a softly creaking floor, and a mysterious movement of the furniture; how twice a dark figure stood by his bedside with fixed eyes, like the ghost of Banquo; there was enough moonlight in the room to reveal the outline of this figure, and to shine dimly through it as through folds of crape. And often there were voices whispering audibly, and it was as if the disembodied had returned to play their parts again before a spectral audience come from the graves of the past; and he was sure to hear at intervals, above the ghostly ranting, the soft patter of applause "Like that," said Proteus, starting from his chair, as a puff of wind extinguished the lamp and left us in awful darkness. We listened. I heard it, or thought I heard it; and though a gentle rain was falling, I rushed out of the place bristling like a porcupine. Once more I look from the seaward window THE DRAMA IN DREAM-LAND 285 of the Legation upon the field where, in days long gone, so many histrionic honors were won. In the midst of it an itinerant phe- nomenon, "the celebrated armless lady," has for the moment pitched her tent; presently no doubt, the corner lot will be absorbed by that ever-increasing caravansary, the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, and a series of semi-detached villas for the accommodation of its guests will spring up under the palms. Were the old theater still standing, the leafy lattice of the green-room would be directly opposite; I might, in such a case, by stretch- ing forth my hands, part the vines and look once more into the haunted chamber. Perhaps he wpuld be sitting there in pajamas and slippers, his elbows resting on the arms of his chair, his face buried in his hands as was his wont when his monologue ran dreamily into the past. Perhaps there would come those pauses, so grateful even in the most interesting discourse, when we said nothing, and forgot that there was silence until it was emphasized by the shudder of leaves that twinkled in the fitful summer gale. But no! The long silence, unbroken ever- more, has come to him, and there is little 286 HAWAIIAN LIFE left to tell of a tale that ended tragically. I often wondered what fate was in reserve for Proteus; in the eternal fitness of things a climax seemed inevitable; yet the few bits of tattered and mildewed scenery leaning against the fence, the weights of the drop curtain, like cannon balls, half buried in the grass, and the bier over which Hamlet and Laertes were wont to mouth now standing in the midst of an unrecognizable heap of rubbish are not less heeded than is the memory of one who was a distinguished character in his time. He fell upon evil days, was hurried out of the kingdom to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune; contumely, humilia- tion, abject poverty these were his compan- ions in an exile which he endured with heroic fortitude. At last he found asylum in his native town, but not the one he would have chosen, nor the one of which he was deserv- ing ; yet that he was grateful for even this much is evident from the tenor of a letter which I re- ceived from him in his last days. He writes : "If you could see and know how restricted my present life is, you would realize how more than welcome your letter was u ln your reference to the past, my mind THE DRAMA IN DREAM-LAND 2S/ went with you, as it has often done without you, back to the pleasant hours we have spent together. Often in my loneliness I recur to them, with the same gratitude that a traveler feals when he recalls to mental view the oases that softened the weariness of the desert. "I hope I am as thankful as I should be for the power of memory; in the present darkness I have many bright pictures of the past to look upon: these are rny consolation. "I have to be, as the Hebrews term it, in