HOW I CONVERTED MY CANNIBAL.
When people began asking me queer questions about my chum Kána-aná, some
of them even hinting that "he might possibly have been a girl all the
time," I resolved to send down for him, and settle the matter at once. I
knew he was not a girl, and I thought I should like to show him some
American hospitality, and perhaps convert him before I sent him back
again.
I could teach him to dress, you know; to say a very good thing to your
face, and a very bad one at your back; to sleep well in church, and
rejoice duly when the preacher got at last to the "Amen." I might do all
this for his soul's sake; but I wanted more to see how the little fellow
was getting on. I missed him so terribly,--his honest way of showing
likes and dislikes; his confidence in his intuitions and fidelity to his
friends; and those quaint manners of his, so different from anything in
vogue this side of the waters.
This is what I remarked when I got home again, and found myself growing
as practical and prosy as ever. I awoke no kindred chord in the family
bosom. On the contrary, they all said, "It was no use to think of it: no
good could come out of Nazareth." The idea of a heathen and his
abominable idolatry being countenanced in the sanctity of a Christian
home was too dreadful for anything. But I believed some good might come
out of Nazareth, and I believed that, when it did come, it was the
genuine article worth hunting for, surely. I thought it all over
soberly, finally resolving to do a little missionary work on my own
account. So I wrote to the Colonel of the Royal Guards, who knows
everybody and has immense influence everywhere, begging him to catch
Kána-aná, when his folks weren't looking, and send him to my address,
marked C. O. D., for I was just dying to see him. That was how I trapped
my little heathen, and began to be a missionary, all by myself.
I assured the Colonel it was a case of real necessity, and he seemed to
realize it, for he managed to get Kána-aná away from his distressed
relatives (their name is legion, and they live all over the island), fit
him out in _real_ clothing,--the poor little wretch had to be dressed,
you know; we all do it in this country,--then he packed him up and
shipped him, care of the captain of the bark S----. When he arrived, I
took him right to my room and began my missionary work. I tried to make
all the people love him, but I'm afraid they found it hard work. He
wasn't half so interesting up here anyhow! I seemed to have been
regarding him through chromatic glasses, which glasses being suddenly
removed, I found a little dark-skinned savage, whose clothes fitted him
horribly, and appeared to have no business there. Boots about twice too
long, the toes being heavily charged with wadding; in fact, he looked
perfectly miserable, and I've no doubt he felt so. How he had been
studying English on the voyage up! He wanted to be a great linguist, and
had begun in good earnest. He said "good mornin'" as boldly as possible
about seven p.m., and invariably spoke of the women of America as "him."
He had an insane desire to spell, and started spelling-matches with
everybody, at the most inappropriate hours and inconvenient places. He
invariably spelled God d-o-g; when duly corrected,--thus, G-o-d,--he
would triumphantly shout, _dog_. He jumped at these irreverent
conclusions about twenty times a day.
What an experience I had educating my little savage! Walking him in the
street by the hour; answering questions on all possible topics; spelling
up and down the blocks; spelling from the centre of the city to the
suburbs and back again, and around it; spelling one another at
spelling,--two latter-day peripatetics on dress parade, passing to and
fro in high and serene strata of philosophy, alike unconscious of the
rudely gazing and insolent citizens, or the tedious calls of labour. A
spell was over us: we ran into all sorts of people, and trod on many a
corn, loafing about in this way. Some of the victims objected in harsh
and sinful language. I found Kána-aná had so far advanced in the
acquirement of our mellifluous tongue as to be very successful in
returning their salutes. I had the greatest difficulty in convincing him
of the enormity of his error. The little convert thought it was our mode
of greeting strangers, equivalent to their more graceful and poetic
password, _Aloha_, "Love to you."
My little cannibal wasn't easily accustomed to his new restraints, such
as clothes, manners, and forbidden water privileges. He several times
started on his daily pilgrimage without his hat; once or twice, to save
time, put his coat on next his skin; and though I finally so far
conquered him as to be sure that his shirt would be worn on the inside
instead of the outside of his trousers (this he considered a great waste
of material), I was in constant terror of his suddenly disrobing in the
street and plunging into the first water we came to,--which barbarous
act would have insured his immediate arrest, perhaps confinement; and
that would have been the next thing to death in his case.
So we perambulated the streets and the suburbs, daily growing into each
other's grace; and I was thinking of the propriety of instituting a
series of more extended excursions, when I began to realize that my
guest was losing interest in our wonderful city and the possible
magnitude of her future.
He grew silent and melancholy; he quitted spelling entirely, or only
indulged in rare and fitful (I am pained to add, fruitless) attempts at
spelling God in the orthodox fashion. It seemed almost as though I had
missed my calling; certainly, I was hardly successful as a missionary.
The circus failed to revive him; the beauty of our young women he
regarded without interest. He was less devout than at first, when he
used to insist upon entering every church we came to and sitting a few
moments, though frequently we were the sole occupants of the building.
He would steal away into remote corners of the house, and be gone for
hours. Twice or three times I discovered him in a dark closet, in _puris
naturalibus_, toying with a singular shell strung upon a feather chain.
The feathers of the chain I recognized as those of a strange bird held
as sacred among his people. I began to suspect the occasion of his
malady: he believed himself bewitched or accursed of some one,--a common
superstition with the dark races. This revelation filled me with alarm;
for he would think nothing of lying down to die under the impression
that it was his fate, and no medicine under the heaven could touch him
further.
I began telling him of my discovery, begging his secret from him. In
vain I besought him. "It was his trouble; he must go back!" I told him
he should go back as soon as possible; that we would look for ourselves,
and see when a vessel was to sail again. I took him among the wharves,
visiting, in turn, nearly all the shipping moored there. How he lingered
about them, letting his eyes wander over the still bay into the mellow
hazes that sometimes visit our brown and dusty hills!
His nature seemed to find an affinity in the tranquil tides, the
far-sweeping distances, the alluring outlines of the coast, where it was
blended with the sea-line in the ever-mysterious horizon. After these
visitations, he seemed loath to return again among houses and people;
they oppressed and suffocated him.
One day, as we were wending our way to the city front, we passed a
specimen of grotesque carving, in front of a tobacconist's
establishment. Kána-aná stood eyeing the painted model for a moment, and
then, to the amazement and amusement of the tobacconist and one or two
bystanders, fell upon his knees before it, and was for a few moments
lost in prayer. It seemed to do him a deal of good, as he was more
cheerful after his invocation,--for that day, at least; and we could
never start upon any subsequent excursion without first visiting this
wooden Indian, which he evidently mistook for a god.
He began presently to bring tributes, in the shape of small
cobble-stones, which he surreptitiously deposited at the feet of his
new-found deity, and passed on, rejoicing. His small altar grew from day
to day, and his spirits were lighter as he beheld it unmolested, thanks
to the indifference of the tobacconist and the street contractors.
His greatest trials were within the confines of the bath-tub. He who had
been born to the Pacific, and reared among its foam and breakers, now
doomed to a seven-by-three zinc box and ten inches of water! He would
splash about like a trout in a saucer, bemoaning his fate. Pilgrimages
to the beach were his greatest delight; divings into the sea, so far
from town that no one could possibly be shocked, even with the
assistance of an opera-glass. He used to implore a daily repetition of
these cautious and inoffensive recreations, though, once in the chilly
current, he soon came out of it, shivering and miserable. Where were his
warm sea-waves, and the shining beach, with the cocoa-palms quivering in
the intense fires of the tropical day? How he missed them and mourned
for them, crooning a little chant in their praises, much to the
disparagement of our dry hills, cold water, and careful people!
In one of our singular walks, when he had been unusually silent, and I
had sought in vain to lift away the gloom that darkened his soul, I was
startled by a quick cry of joy from the lips of the young exile,--a cry
that was soon turned into a sharp, prolonged, and pitiful wail of sorrow
and despair. We had unconsciously approached an art-gallery, the deep
windows of which, were beautified with a few choice landscapes in oil.
Kána-aná's restless and searching eye, doubtless attracted by the
brilliant colouring of one of the pictures, seemed in a moment to
comprehend and assume the rich and fervent spirit with which the artist
had so successfully imbued his canvas.
It was the subject which had at first delighted Kána-aná,--the splendid
charm of its manipulation which so affected him, holding him there
wailing in the bitterness of a natural and incontrollable sorrow. The
painting was illuminated with the mellowness of a tropical sunset. A
transparent light seemed to transfigure the sea and sky. The artist had
wrought a miracle in his inspiration. It was a warm, hazy, silent sunset
for ever. The outline of a high, projecting cliff was barely visible in
the flood of misty glory that spread over the face of it,--a cliff whose
delicate tints of green and crimson pictured in the mind a pyramid of
leaves and flowers. A valley opened its shadowy depths through the
sparkling atmosphere, and in the centre of this veiled chasm the pale
threads of two waterfalls seemed to appear and disappear, so exquisitely
was the distance imitated. Gilded breakers reeled upon a palm-fringed
shore; and the whole was hallowed by the perpetual peace of an unbroken
solitude.
I at once detected the occasion of Kána-aná's agitation. Here was the
valley of his birth,--the cliff, the waterfall, the sea, copied
faithfully, at that crowning hour when they are indeed supernaturally
lovely. At that moment, the promise to him of a return would have been
mockery. He was there in spirit, pacing the beach, and greeting his
companions with that liberal exchange of love peculiar to them. Again he
sought our old haunt by the river, watching the sun go down. Again he
waited listlessly the coming of night.
It was a wonder that the police did not march us both off to the
station-house; for the little refugee was howling at the top of his
lungs, while I endeavoured to quiet him by bursting a sort of vocal
tornado about his ears. I then saw my error. I said to myself, "I have
transplanted a flower from the hot sand of the Orient to the hard clay
of our more material world,--a flower too fragile to be handled, if
never so kindly. Day after day it has been fed, watered, and nourished
by Nature. Every element of life has ministered to its development in
the most natural way. Its attributes are God's and Nature's own. I bring
it hither, set it in our tough soil, and endeavour to train its
sensitive tendrils in one direction. There is no room for spreading them
here, where we are overcrowded already. It finds no succulence in its
cramped bed, no warmth in our practical and selfish atmosphere. It
withers from the root upward; its blossoms are falling; it will die!" I
resolved it should not die. Unfortunately, there was no bark announced
to sail for his island home within several weeks. I could only devote my
energies to keeping life in that famishing soul until it had found rest
in the luxurious clime of its nativity.
At last the bark arrived. We went at once to see her; and I could hardly
persuade the little homesick soul to come back with me at night. He who
was the fire of hospitality and obliging to the uttermost, at home, came
very near to mutiny just then.
It was this civilization that had wounded him, till the thought of his
easy and pleasurable life among the barbarians stung him to madness.
Should he ever see them again, his lovers? ever climb with the
goat-hunters among the clouds yonder? or bathe, ride, sport, as he used
to, till the day was spent and the night come?
Those little booths near the wharves, where shells, corals, and
gold-fish are on sale, were Kána-aná's favourite haunts during the last
few days he spent here. I would leave him seated on a box or barrel by
one of those epitomes of Oceanica, and return two hours later, to find
him seated as I had left him, and singing some weird _méle_,--some
legend of his home. These musical diversions were a part of his nature,
and a very grave and sweet part of it, too. A few words, chanted on a
low note, began the song, when the voice would suddenly soar upward with
a single syllable of exceeding sweetness, and there hang trembling in
bird-like melody till it died away with the breath of the singer.
Poor, longing soul! I would you had never left the life best suited to
you,--that liberty which alone could give expression to your wonderful
capacities. Not many are so rich in instincts to read Nature, to
translate her revelations, to speak of her as an orator endowed with her
surpassing eloquence.
It will always be a sad effort, thinking of that last night together.
There are hours when the experiences of a lifetime seem compressed and
crowded together. One grows a head taller in his soul at such times, and
perhaps gets suddenly grey, as with a fright, also.
Kána-aná talked and talked in his pretty, broken English, telling me of
a thousand charming secrets; expressing all the natural graces that at
first attracted me to him, and imploring me over and over to return
with him and dwell in the antipodes. How near I came to resolving, then
and there, that I _would_ go, and take the consequences,--how very near
I came to it! He passed the night in coaxing, promising, entreating; and
was never more interesting or lovable. It took just about all the moral
courage allotted me to keep on this side of barbarism on that eventful
occasion; and in the morning Kána-aná sailed, with a face all over
tears, and agony, and dust.
I begged him to select something for a remembrancer; and of all that
ingenuity can invent and art achieve he chose a metallic chain for his
neck,--chose it, probably, because it glittered superbly, and was good
to string charms upon. He gave me the greater part of his wardrobe,
though it can never be of any earthly use to me, save as a memorial of a
passing joy in a life where joys seem to have little else to do than be
brief and palatable.
He said he should "never want them again"; and he said it as one might
say something of the same sort in putting by some instrument of
degradation,--conscious of renewed manhood, but remembering his late
humiliation, and bowing to that remembrance.
So Kána-aná and the bark, and all that I ever knew of genuine,
spontaneous, and unfettered love, sailed into the west, and went down
with the sun in a glory of air, sea, and sky, trebly glorious that
evening. I shall never meet the sea when it is bluest without thinking
of one who is its child and master. I shall never see mangoes and
bananas without thinking of him who is their brother, born and brought
up with them. I shall never smell cassia, or clove, or jessamine, but a
thought of Kána-aná will be borne upon their breath. A flying skiff,
land in the far distance rising slowly, drifting seagrasses, a clear
voice burdened with melody,--all belong to him, and are a part of him.
I resign my office. I think that, perhaps, instead of my having
converted the little cannibal, he may have converted me. I am sure, at
least, that if we two should begin a missionary work upon one another, I
should be the first to experience the great change. I sent my convert
home, feeling he wasn't quite so good as when I first got him; and I
truly wish him as he was.
* * * * *
I can see you, my beloved,--sleeping, naked, in the twilight of the
west. The winds kiss you with pure and fragrant lips. The sensuous waves
invite you to their embrace. Earth again offers you her varied store.
Partake of her offering, and be satisfied. Return, O troubled soul! to
your first and natural joys: they were given you by the Divine hand that
can do no ill. In the smoke of the sacrifice ascends the prayer of your
race. As the incense fadeth and is scattered upon the winds of heaven,
so shall your people separate, never more to assemble among the nations.
So perish your superstitions, your necromancies, your ancient arts of
war, and the unwritten epics of your kings.
Alas, Kána-aná! As the foam of the sea you love, as the fragrance of the
flower you worship, shall your precious body be wasted, and your
untrammelled soul pass to the realms of your fathers.
Our day of communion is over. Behold how Night extends her wings to
cover you from my sight! She may, indeed, hide your presence; she may
withhold from me the mystery of your future: but she cannot take from me
that which I have; she cannot rob me of the rich influences of your
past.
Dear comrade, pardon and absolve your spiritual adviser, for seeking to
remould so delicate and original a soul as yours; and, though neither
prophet nor priest, I yet give you the kiss of peace at parting, and the
benediction of unceasing love.