Jameson's Raid--The Reform Committee's Difficult Task--Possible Plans
--Advice that Jameson Ought to Have--The War of 1881 and its Lessons
--Statistics of Losses of the Combatants--Jameson's Battles--Losses on Both
Sides--The Military Errors--How the Warfare Should Have Been Carried on
to Be Successful
CHAPTER LXVIII.
Judicious Mr. Rhodes--What South Africa Consists of--Johannesburg--The
Gold Mines--The Heaven of American Engineers--What the Author Knows about
Mining--Description of the Boer--What Should be Expected of Him--What Was
A Dizzy Jump for Rhodes--Taxes--Rhodesian Method of Reducing Native
Population--Journeying in Cape Colony--The Cars--The Country--The
Weather--Tamed Blacks--Familiar Figures in King William's Town--Boer
Dress--Boer Country Life--Sleeping Accommodations--The Reformers in Boer
Prison--Torturing a Black Prisoner
CHAPTER LXIX.
An Absorbing Novelty--The Kimberley Diamond Mines--Discovery of Diamonds
--The Wronged Stranger--Where the Gems Are--A Judicious Change of
Boundary--Modern Machinery and Appliances--Thrilling Excitement in
Finding a Diamond--Testing a Diamond--Fences--Deep Mining by Natives in
the Compound--Stealing--Reward for the Biggest Diamond--A Fortune in
Wine--The Great Diamond--Office of the De Beer Co.--Sorting the Gems
--Cape Town--The Most Imposing Man in British Provinces--Various Reasons
for his Supremacy--How He Makes Friends
CONCLUSION.
Table Rock--Table Bay--The Castle--Government and Parliament--The Club
--Dutch Mansions and their Hospitality--Dr. John Barry and his Doings--On
the Ship Norman--Madeira--Arrived in Southampton
FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR
CHAPTER I.
A man may have no bad habits and have worse.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
The starting point of this lecturing-trip around the world was Paris,
where we had been living a year or two.
We sailed for America, and there made certain preparations. This took
but little time. Two members of my family elected to go with me. Also a
carbuncle. The dictionary says a carbuncle is a kind of jewel. Humor is
out of place in a dictionary.
We started westward from New York in midsummer, with Major Pond to manage
the platform-business as far as the Pacific. It was warm work, all the
way, and the last fortnight of it was suffocatingly smoky, for in Oregon
and Columbia the forest fires were raging. We had an added week of smoke
at the seaboard, where we were obliged awhile for our ship. She had been
getting herself ashore in the smoke, and she had to be docked and
repaired.
We sailed at last; and so ended a snail-paced march across the continent,
which had lasted forty days.
We moved westward about mid-afternoon over a rippled and summer sea; an
enticing sea, a clean and cool sea, and apparently a welcome sea to all
on board; it certainly was to the distressful dustings and smokings and
swelterings of the past weeks. The voyage would furnish a three-weeks
holiday, with hardly a break in it. We had the whole Pacific Ocean in
front of us, with nothing to do but do nothing and be comfortable. The
city of Victoria was twinkling dim in the deep heart of her smoke-cloud,
and getting ready to vanish and now we closed the field-glasses and sat
down on our steamer chairs contented and at peace. But they went to
wreck and ruin under us and brought us to shame before all the
passengers. They had been furnished by the largest furniture-dealing
house in Victoria, and were worth a couple of farthings a dozen, though
they had cost us the price of honest chairs. In the Pacific and Indian
Oceans one must still bring his own deck-chair on board or go without,
just as in the old forgotten Atlantic times--those Dark Ages of sea
travel.
Ours was a reasonably comfortable ship, with the customary sea-going fare
--plenty of good food furnished by the Deity and cooked by the devil.
The discipline observable on board was perhaps as good as it is anywhere
in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The ship was not very well arranged
for tropical service; but that is nothing, for this is the rule for ships
which ply in the tropics. She had an over-supply of cockroaches, but
this is also the rule with ships doing business in the summer seas--at
least such as have been long in service. Our young captain was a very
handsome man, tall and perfectly formed, the very figure to show up a
smart uniform's best effects. He was a man of the best intentions and
was polite and courteous even to courtliness. There was a soft and
finish about his manners which made whatever place he happened to be in
seem for the moment a drawing room. He avoided the smoking room. He had
no vices. He did not smoke or chew tobacco or take snuff; he did not
swear, or use slang or rude, or coarse, or indelicate language, or make
puns, or tell anecdotes, or laugh intemperately, or raise his voice above
the moderate pitch enjoined by the canons of good form. When he gave an
order, his manner modified it into a request. After dinner he and his
officers joined the ladies and gentlemen in the ladies' saloon, and
shared in the singing and piano playing, and helped turn the music. He
had a sweet and sympathetic tenor voice, and used it with taste and
effect the music he played whist there, always with the same partner and
opponents, until the ladies' bedtime. The electric lights burned there
as late as the ladies and their friends might desire; but they were not
allowed to burn in the smoking-room after eleven. There were many laws
on the ship's statute book of course; but so far as I could see, this and
one other were the only ones that were rigidly enforced. The captain
explained that he enforced this one because his own cabin adjoined the
smoking-room, and the smell of tobacco smoke made him sick. I did not
see how our smoke could reach him, for the smoking-room and his cabin
were on the upper deck, targets for all the winds that blew; and besides
there was no crack of communication between them, no opening of any sort
in the solid intervening bulkhead. Still, to a delicate stomach even
imaginary smoke can convey damage.
The captain, with his gentle nature, his polish, his sweetness, his moral
and verbal purity, seemed pathetically out of place in his rude and
autocratic vocation. It seemed another instance of the irony of fate.
He was going home under a cloud. The passengers knew about his trouble,
and were sorry for him. Approaching Vancouver through a narrow and
difficult passage densely befogged with smoke from the forest fires, he
had had the ill-luck to lose his bearings and get his ship on the rocks.
A matter like this would rank merely as an error with you and me; it
ranks as a crime with the directors of steamship companies. The captain
had been tried by the Admiralty Court at Vancouver, and its verdict had
acquitted him of blame. But that was insufficient comfort. A sterner
court would examine the case in Sydney--the Court of Directors, the lords
of a company in whose ships the captain had served as mate a number of
years. This was his first voyage as captain.
The officers of our ship were hearty and companionable young men, and
they entered into the general amusements and helped the passengers pass
the time. Voyages in the Pacific and Indian Oceans are but pleasure
excursions for all hands. Our purser was a young Scotchman who was
equipped with a grit that was remarkable. He was an invalid, and looked
it, as far as his body was concerned, but illness could not subdue his
spirit. He was full of life, and had a gay and capable tongue. To all
appearances he was a sick man without being aware of it, for he did not
talk about his ailments, and his bearing and conduct were those of a
person in robust health; yet he was the prey, at intervals, of ghastly
sieges of pain in his heart. These lasted many hours, and while the
attack continued he could neither sit nor lie. In one instance he stood
on his feet twenty-four hours fighting for his life with these sharp
agonies, and yet was as full of life and cheer and activity
the next day as if nothing had happened.
The brightest passenger in the ship, and the most interesting and
felicitous talker, was a young Canadian who was not able to let the
whisky bottle alone. He was of a rich and powerful family, and could have
had a distinguished career and abundance of effective help toward it if
he could have conquered his appetite for drink; but he could not do it,
so his great equipment of talent was of no use to him. He had often taken
the pledge to drink no more, and was a good sample of what that sort of
unwisdom can do for a man--for a man with anything short of an iron will.
The system is wrong in two ways: it does not strike at the root of the
trouble, for one thing, and to make a pledge of any kind is to declare
war against nature; for a pledge is a chain that is always clanking and
reminding the wearer of it that he is not a free man.
I have said that the system does not strike at the root of the trouble,
and I venture to repeat that. The root is not the drinking, but the
desire to drink. These are very different things. The one merely
requires will--and a great deal of it, both as to bulk and staying
capacity--the other merely requires watchfulness--and for no long time.
The desire of course precedes the act, and should have one's first
attention; it can do but little good to refuse the act over and over
again, always leaving the desire unmolested, unconquered; the desire will
continue to assert itself, and will be almost sure to win in the long
run. When the desire intrudes, it should be at once banished out of the
mind. One should be on the watch for it all the time--otherwise it will
get in. It must be taken in time and not allowed to get a lodgment. A
desire constantly repulsed for a fortnight should die, then. That should
cure the drinking habit. The system of refusing the mere act of
drinking, and leaving the desire in full force, is unintelligent war
tactics, it seems to me. I used to take pledges--and soon violate them.
My will was not strong, and I could not help it. And then, to be tied in
any way naturally irks an otherwise free person and makes him chafe in
his bonds and want to get his liberty. But when I finally ceased from
taking definite pledges, and merely resolved that I would kill an
injurious desire, but leave myself free to resume the desire and the
habit whenever I should choose to do so, I had no more trouble. In five
days I drove out the desire to smoke and was not obliged to keep watch
after that; and I never experienced any strong desire to smoke again. At
the end of a year and a quarter of idleness I began to write a book, and
presently found that the pen was strangely reluctant to go. I tried a
smoke to see if that would help me out of the difficulty. It did. I
smoked eight or ten cigars and as many pipes a day for five months;
finished the book, and did not smoke again until a year had gone by and
another book had to be begun.
I can quit any of my nineteen injurious habits at any time, and without
discomfort or inconvenience. I think that the Dr. Tanners and those
others who go forty days without eating do it by resolutely keeping out
the desire to eat, in the beginning, and that after a few hours the
desire is discouraged and comes no more.
Once I tried my scheme in a large medical way. I had been confined to my
bed several days with lumbago. My case refused to improve. Finally the
doctor said,--
"My remedies have no fair chance. Consider what they have to fight,
besides the lumbago. You smoke extravagantly, don't you?"
"Yes."
"You take coffee immoderately?"
"Yes."
"And some tea?"
"Yes."
"You eat all kinds of things that are dissatisfied with each other's
company?"
"Yes."
"You drink two hot Scotches every night?"
"Yes."
"Very well, there you see what I have to contend against. We can't make
progress the way the matter stands. You must make a reduction in these
things; you must cut down your consumption of them considerably for some
days."
"I can't, doctor."
"Why can't you."
"I lack the will-power. I can cut them off entirely, but I can't merely
moderate them."
He said that that would answer, and said he would come around in
twenty-four hours and begin work again. He was taken ill himself and
could not come; but I did not need him. I cut off all those things for
two days and nights; in fact, I cut off all kinds of food, too, and all
drinks except water, and at the end of the forty-eight hours the lumbago
was discouraged and left me. I was a well man; so I gave thanks and took
to those delicacies again.
It seemed a valuable medical course, and I recommended it to a lady. She
had run down and down and down, and had at last reached a point where
medicines no longer had any helpful effect upon her. I said I knew I
could put her upon her feet in a week. It brightened her up, it filled
her with hope, and she said she would do everything I told her to do. So
I said she must stop swearing and drinking, and smoking and eating for
four days, and then she would be all right again. And it would have
happened just so, I know it; but she said she could not stop swearing,
and smoking, and drinking, because she had never done those things. So
there it was. She had neglected her habits, and hadn't any. Now that
they would have come good, there were none in stock. She had nothing to
fall back on. She was a sinking vessel, with no freight in her to throw
over lighten ship withal. Why, even one or two little bad habits could
have saved her, but she was just a moral pauper. When she could have
acquired them she was dissuaded by her parents, who were ignorant people
though reared in the best society, and it was too late to begin now. It
seemed such a pity; but there was no help for it. These things ought to
be attended to while a person is young; otherwise, when age and disease
come, there is nothing effectual to fight them with.
When I was a youth I used to take all kinds of pledges, and do my best to
keep them, but I never could, because I didn't strike at the root of the
habit--the desire; I generally broke down within the month. Once I tried
limiting a habit. That worked tolerably well for a while. I pledged
myself to smoke but one cigar a day. I kept the cigar waiting until
bedtime, then I had a luxurious time with it. But desire persecuted me
every day and all day long; so, within the week I found myself hunting
for larger cigars than I had been used to smoke; then larger ones still,
and still larger ones. Within the fortnight I was getting cigars made
for me--on a yet larger pattern. They still grew and grew in size.
Within the month my cigar had grown to such proportions that I could have
used it as a crutch. It now seemed to me that a one-cigar limit was no
real protection to a person, so I knocked my pledge on the head and
resumed my liberty.
To go back to that young Canadian. He was a "remittance man," the first
one I had ever seen or heard of. Passengers explained the term to me.
They said that dissipated ne'er-do-wells belonging to important families
in England and Canada were not cast off by their people while there was
any hope of reforming them, but when that last hope perished at last, the
ne'er-do-well was sent abroad to get him out of the way. He was shipped
off with just enough money in his pocket--no, in the purser's pocket--for
the needs of the voyage--and when he reached his destined port he would
find a remittance awaiting him there. Not a large one, but just enough
to keep him a month. A similar remittance would come monthly thereafter.
It was the remittance-man's custom to pay his month's board and lodging
straightway--a duty which his landlord did not allow him to forget--then
spree away the rest of his money in a single night, then brood and mope
and grieve in idleness till the next remittance came. It is a pathetic
life.
We had other remittance-men on board, it was said. At least they said
they were R. M.'s. There were two. But they did not resemble the
Canadian; they lacked his tidiness, and his brains, and his gentlemanly
ways, and his resolute spirit, and his humanities and generosities. One
of them was a lad of nineteen or twenty, and he was a good deal of a
ruin, as to clothes, and morals, and general aspect. He said he was a
scion of a ducal house in England, and had been shipped to Canada for the
house's relief, that he had fallen into trouble there, and was now being
shipped to Australia. He said he had no title. Beyond this remark he
was economical of the truth. The first thing he did in Australia was to
get into the lockup, and the next thing he did was to proclaim himself an
earl in the police court in the morning and fail to prove it.
CHAPTER II.
When in doubt, tell the truth.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
About four days out from Victoria we plunged into hot weather, and all
the male passengers put on white linen clothes. One or two days later we
crossed the 25th parallel of north latitude, and then, by order, the
officers of the ship laid away their blue uniforms and came out in white
linen ones. All the ladies were in white by this time. This prevalence
of snowy costumes gave the promenade deck an invitingly cool, and
cheerful and picnicky aspect.
From my diary:
There are several sorts of ills in the world from which a person can
never escape altogether, let him journey as far as he will. One escapes
from one breed of an ill only to encounter another breed of it. We have
come far from the snake liar and the fish liar, and there was rest and
peace in the thought; but now we have reached the realm of the boomerang
liar, and sorrow is with us once more. The first officer has seen a man
try to escape from his enemy by getting behind a tree; but the enemy sent
his boomerang sailing into the sky far above and beyond the tree; then it
turned, descended, and killed the man. The Australian passenger has seen
this thing done to two men, behind two trees--and by the one arrow. This
being received with a large silence that suggested doubt, he buttressed
it with the statement that his brother once saw the boomerang kill a bird
away off a hundred yards and bring it to the thrower. But these are ills
which must be borne. There is no other way.
The talk passed from the boomerang to dreams--usually a fruitful subject,
afloat or ashore--but this time the output was poor. Then it passed to
instances of extraordinary memory--with better results. Blind Tom, the
negro pianist, was spoken of, and it was said that he could accurately
play any piece of music, howsoever long and difficult, after hearing it
once; and that six months later he could accurately play it again,
without having touched it in the interval. One of the most striking of
the stories told was furnished by a gentleman who had served on the staff
of the Viceroy of India. He read the details from his note-book, and
explained that he had written them down, right after the consummation of
the incident which they described, because he thought that if he did not
put them down in black and white he might presently come to think he had
dreamed them or invented them.
The Viceroy was making a progress, and among the shows offered by the
Maharajah of Mysore for his entertainment was a memory-exhibition.
The Viceroy and thirty gentlemen of his suite sat in a row, and the
memory-expert, a high-caste Brahmin, was brought in and seated on the
floor in front of them. He said he knew but two languages, the English
and his own, but would not exclude any foreign tongue from the tests to
be applied to his memory. Then he laid before the assemblage his program
--a sufficiently extraordinary one. He proposed that one gentleman
should give him one word of a foreign sentence, and tell him its place in
the sentence. He was furnished with the French word 'est', and was told
it was second in a sentence of three words. The next, gentleman gave him
the German word 'verloren' and said it was the third in a sentence of
four words. He asked the next gentleman for one detail in a sum in
addition; another for one detail in a sum of subtraction; others for
single details in mathematical problems of various kinds; he got them.
Intermediates gave him single words from sentences in Greek, Latin,
Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and other languages, and told him their
places in the sentences. When at last everybody had furnished him a
single rag from a foreign sentence or a figure from a problem, he went
over the ground again, and got a second word and a second figure and was
told their places in the sentences and the sums; and so on and so on. He
went over the ground again and again until he had collected all the parts
of the sums and all the parts of the sentences--and all in disorder, of
course, not in their proper rotation. This had occupied two hours.
The Brahmin now sat silent and thinking, a while, then began and repeated
all the sentences, placing the words in their proper order, and untangled
the disordered arithmetical problems and gave accurate answers to them
all.
In the beginning he had asked the company to throw almonds at him during
the two hours, he to remember how many each gentleman had thrown; but
none were thrown, for the Viceroy said that the test would be a
sufficiently severe strain without adding that burden to it.
General Grant had a fine memory for all kinds of things, including even
names and faces, and I could have furnished an instance of it if I had
thought of it. The first time I ever saw him was early in his first term
as President. I had just arrived in Washington from the Pacific coast, a
stranger and wholly unknown to the public, and was passing the White
House one morning when I met a friend, a Senator from Nevada. He asked
me if I would like to see the President. I said I should be very glad;
so we entered. I supposed that the President would be in the midst of a
crowd, and that I could look at him in peace and security from a
distance, as another stray cat might look at another king. But it was in
the morning, and the Senator was using a privilege of his office which I
had not heard of--the privilege of intruding upon the Chief Magistrate's
working hours. Before I knew it, the Senator and I were in the presence,
and there was none there but we three. General Grant got slowly up from
his table, put his pen down, and stood before me with the iron expression
of a man who had not smiled for seven years, and was not intending to
smile for another seven. He looked me steadily in the eyes--mine lost
confidence and fell. I had never confronted a great man before, and was
in a miserable state of funk and inefficiency. The Senator said:--
"Mr. President, may I have the privilege of introducing Mr. Clemens?"
The President gave my hand an unsympathetic wag and dropped it. He did
not say a word but just stood. In my trouble I could not think of
anything to say, I merely wanted to resign. There was an awkward pause,
a dreary pause, a horrible pause. Then I thought of something, and
looked up into that unyielding face, and said timidly:--
"Mr. President, I--I am embarrassed. Are you?"
His face broke--just a little--a wee glimmer, the momentary flicker of a
summer-lightning smile, seven years ahead of time--and I was out and gone
as soon as it was.
Ten years passed away before I saw him the second time. Meantime I was
become better known; and was one of the people appointed to respond to
toasts at the banquet given to General Grant in Chicago--by the Army of
the Tennessee when he came back from his tour around the world. I
arrived late at night and got up late in the morning. All the corridors
of the hotel were crowded with people waiting to get a glimpse of General
Grant when he should pass to the place whence he was to review the great
procession. I worked my way by the suite of packed drawing-rooms, and at
the corner of the house I found a window open where there was a roomy
platform decorated with flags, and carpeted. I stepped out on it, and
saw below me millions of people blocking all the streets, and other
millions caked together in all the windows and on all the house-tops
around. These masses took me for General Grant, and broke into volcanic
explosions and cheers; but it was a good place to see the procession, and
I stayed. Presently I heard the distant blare of military music, and far
up the street I saw the procession come in sight, cleaving its way
through the huzzaing multitudes, with Sheridan, the most martial
figure of the War, riding at its head in the dress uniform of a
Lieutenant-General.
And now General Grant, arm-in-arm with Major Carter Harrison, stepped out
on the platform, followed two and two by the badged and uniformed
reception committee. General Grant was looking exactly as he had looked
upon that trying occasion of ten years before--all iron and bronze
self-possession. Mr. Harrison came over and led me to the General and
formally introduced me. Before I could put together the proper remark,
General Grant said--
"Mr. Clemens, I am not embarrassed. Are you?"--and that little
seven-year smile twinkled across his face again.
Seventeen years have gone by since then, and to-day, in New York, the
streets are a crush of people who are there to honor the remains of the
great soldier as they pass to their final resting-place under the
monument; and the air is heavy with dirges and the boom of artillery, and
all the millions of America are thinking of the man who restored the
Union and the flag, and gave to democratic government a new lease of
life, and, as we may hope and do believe, a permanent place among the
beneficent institutions of men.
We had one game in the ship which was a good time-passer--at least it was
at night in the smoking-room when the men were getting freshened up from
the day's monotonies and dullnesses. It was the completing of
non-complete stories. That is to say, a man would tell all of a story
except the finish, then the others would try to supply the ending out of
their own invention. When every one who wanted a chance had had it, the
man who had introduced the story would give it its original ending--then
you could take your choice. Sometimes the new endings turned out to be
better than the old one. But the story which called out the most
persistent and determined and ambitious effort was one which had no
ending, and so there was nothing to compare the new-made endings with.
The man who told it said he could furnish the particulars up to a certain
point only, because that was as much of the tale as he knew. He had read
it in a volume of `sketches twenty-five years ago, and was interrupted
before the end was reached. He would give any one fifty dollars who
would finish the story to the satisfaction of a jury to be appointed by
ourselves. We appointed a jury and wrestled with the tale. We invented
plenty of endings, but the jury voted them all down. The jury was right.
It was a tale which the author of it may possibly have completed
satisfactorily, and if he really had that good fortune I would like to
know what the ending was. Any ordinary man will find that the story's
strength is in its middle, and that there is apparently no way to
transfer it to the close, where of course it ought to be. In substance
the storiette was as follows:
John Brown, aged thirty-one, good, gentle, bashful, timid, lived in a
quiet village in Missouri. He was superintendent of the Presbyterian
Sunday-school. It was but a humble distinction; still, it was his only
official one, and he was modestly proud of it and was devoted to its work
and its interests. The extreme kindliness of his nature was recognized
by all; in fact, people said that he was made entirely out of good
impulses and bashfulness; that he could always be counted upon for help
when it was needed, and for bashfulness both when it was needed and when
it wasn't.
Mary Taylor, twenty-three, modest, sweet, winning, and in character and
person beautiful, was all in all to him. And he was very nearly all in
all to her. She was wavering, his hopes were high. Her mother had been
in opposition from the first. But she was wavering, too; he could
see it. She was being touched by his warm interest in her two
charity-proteges and by his contributions toward their support. These
were two forlorn and aged sisters who lived in a log hut in a lonely
place up a cross road four miles from Mrs. Taylor's farm. One of the
sisters was crazy, and sometimes a little violent, but not often.
At last the time seemed ripe for a final advance, and Brown gathered his
courage together and resolved to make it. He would take along a
contribution of double the usual size, and win the mother over; with her
opposition annulled, the rest of the conquest would be sure and prompt.
He took to the road in the middle of a placid Sunday afternoon in the
soft Missourian summer, and he was equipped properly for his mission. He
was clothed all in white linen, with a blue ribbon for a necktie, and he
had on dressy tight boots. His horse and buggy were the finest that the
livery stable could furnish. The lap robe was of white linen, it was
new, and it had a hand-worked border that could not be rivaled in that
region for beauty and elaboration.
When he was four miles out on the lonely road and was walking his horse
over a wooden bridge, his straw hat blew off and fell in the creek, and
floated down and lodged against a bar. He did not quite know what to do.
He must have the hat, that was manifest; but how was he to get it?
Then he had an idea. The roads were empty, nobody was stirring. Yes, he
would risk it. He led the horse to the roadside and set it to cropping
the grass; then he undressed and put his clothes in the buggy, petted the
horse a moment to secure its compassion and its loyalty, then hurried to
the stream. He swam out and soon had the hat. When he got to the top of
the bank the horse was gone!
His legs almost gave way under him. The horse was walking leisurely
along the road. Brown trotted after it, saying, "Whoa, whoa, there's a
good fellow;" but whenever he got near enough to chance a jump for the
buggy, the horse quickened its pace a little and defeated him. And so
this went on, the naked man perishing with anxiety, and expecting every
moment to see people come in sight. He tagged on and on, imploring the
horse, beseeching the horse, till he had left a mile behind him, and was
closing up on the Taylor premises; then at last he was successful, and
got into the buggy. He flung on his shirt, his necktie, and his coat;
then reached for--but he was too late; he sat suddenly down and pulled up
the lap-robe, for he saw some one coming out of the gate--a woman; he
thought. He wheeled the horse to the left, and struck briskly up the
cross-road. It was perfectly straight, and exposed on both sides; but
there were woods and a sharp turn three miles ahead, and he was very
grateful when he got there. As he passed around the turn he slowed down
to a walk, and reached for his tr---- too late again.
He had come upon Mrs. Enderby, Mrs. Glossop, Mrs. Taylor, and Mary.
They were on foot, and seemed tired and excited. They came at once to
the buggy and shook hands, and all spoke at once, and said eagerly and
earnestly, how glad they were that he was come, and how fortunate it was.
And Mrs. Enderby said, impressively:
"It looks like an accident, his coming at such a time; but let no one
profane it with such a name; he was sent--sent from on high."
They were all moved, and Mrs. Glossop said in an awed voice:
"Sarah Enderby, you never said a truer word in your life. This is no
accident, it is a special Providence. He was sent. He is an angel--an
angel as truly as ever angel was--an angel of deliverance. I say angel,
Sarah Enderby, and will have no other word. Don't let any one ever say
to me again, that there's no such thing as special Providences; for if
this isn't one, let them account for it that can."
"I know it's so," said Mrs. Taylor, fervently. "John Brown, I could
worship you; I could go down on my knees to you. Didn't something tell
you?--didn't you feel that you were sent? I could kiss the hem of your
laprobe."
He was not able to speak; he was helpless with shame and fright. Mrs.
Taylor went on:
"Why, just look at it all around, Julia Glossop. Any person can see the
hand of Providence in it. Here at noon what do we see? We see the smoke
rising. I speak up and say, 'That's the Old People's cabin afire.'
Didn't I, Julia Glossop?"
"The very words you said, Nancy Taylor. I was as close to you as I am
now, and I heard them. You may have said hut instead of cabin, but in
substance it's the same. And you were looking pale, too."
"Pale? I was that pale that if--why, you just compare it with this
laprobe. Then the next thing I said was, 'Mary Taylor, tell the hired
man to rig up the team-we'll go to the rescue.' And she said, 'Mother,
don't you know you told him he could drive to see his people, and stay
over Sunday?' And it was just so. I declare for it, I had forgotten it.
'Then,' said I, 'we'll go afoot.' And go we did. And found Sarah
Enderby on the road."
"And we all went together," said Mrs. Enderby. "And found the cabin set
fire to and burnt down by the crazy one, and the poor old things so old
and feeble that they couldn't go afoot. And we got them to a shady place
and made them as comfortable as we could, and began to wonder which way
to turn to find some way to get them conveyed to Nancy Taylor's house.
And I spoke up and said--now what did I say? Didn't I say, 'Providence
will provide'?"
"Why sure as you live, so you did! I had forgotten it."
"So had I," said Mrs. Glossop and Mrs. Taylor; "but you certainly said
it. Now wasn't that remarkable?"
"Yes, I said it. And then we went to Mr. Moseley's, two miles, and all
of them were gone to the camp meeting over on Stony Fork; and then we
came all the way back, two miles, and then here, another mile--and
Providence has provided. You see it yourselves"
They gazed at each other awe-struck, and lifted their hands and said in
unison:
"It's per-fectly wonderful."
"And then," said Mrs. Glossop, "what do you think we had better do let
Mr. Brown drive the Old People to Nancy Taylor's one at a time, or put
both of them in the buggy, and him lead the horse?"
Brown gasped.
"Now, then, that's a question," said Mrs. Enderby. "You see, we are all
tired out, and any way we fix it it's going to be difficult. For if Mr.
Brown takes both of them, at least one of us must, go back to help him,
for he can't load them into the buggy by himself, and they so helpless."
"That is so," said Mrs. Taylor. "It doesn't look-oh, how would this do?
--one of us drive there with Mr. Brown, and the rest of you go along to
my house and get things ready. I'll go with him. He and I together can
lift one of the Old People into the buggy; then drive her to my house
and----
"But who will take care of the other one?" said Mrs. Enderby. "We
musn't leave her there in the woods alone, you know--especially the crazy
one. There and back is eight miles, you see."
They had all been sitting on the grass beside the buggy for a while, now,
trying to rest their weary bodies. They fell silent a moment or two, and
struggled in thought over the baffling situation; then Mrs. Enderby
brightened and said:
"I think I've got the idea, now. You see, we can't walk any more. Think
what we've done: four miles there, two to Moseley's, is six, then back to
here--nine miles since noon, and not a bite to eat; I declare I don't see
how we've done it; and as for me, I am just famishing. Now, somebody's
got to go back, to help Mr. Brown--there's no getting mound that; but
whoever goes has got to ride, not walk. So my idea is this: one of us to
ride back with Mr. Brown, then ride to Nancy Taylor's house with one of
the Old People, leaving Mr. Brown to keep the other old one company, you
all to go now to Nancy's and rest and wait; then one of you drive back
and get the other one and drive her to Nancy's, and Mr. Brown walk."
"Splendid!" they all cried. "Oh, that will do--that will answer
perfectly." And they all said that Mrs. Enderby had the best head for
planning, in the company; and they said that they wondered that they
hadn't thought of this simple plan themselves. They hadn't meant to take
back the compliment, good simple souls, and didn't know they had done it.
After a consultation it was decided that Mrs. Enderby should drive back
with Brown, she being entitled to the distinction because she had
invented the plan. Everything now being satisfactorily arranged and
settled, the ladies rose, relieved and happy, and brushed down their
gowns, and three of them started homeward; Mrs. Enderby set her foot on
the buggy-step and was about to climb in, when Brown found a remnant of
his voice and gasped out--
"Please Mrs. Enderby, call them back--I am very weak; I can't walk, I
can't, indeed."
"Why, dear Mr. Brown! You do look pale; I am ashamed of myself that I
didn't notice it sooner. Come back-all of you! Mr. Brown is not well.
Is there anything I can do for you, Mr. Brown?--I'm real sorry. Are you
in pain?"
"No, madam, only weak; I am not sick, but only just weak--lately; not
long, but just lately."
The others came back, and poured out their sympathies and commiserations,
and were full of self-reproaches for not having noticed how pale he was.
And they at once struck out a new plan, and soon agreed that it was by
far the best of all. They would all go to Nancy Taylor's house and see
to Brown's needs first. He could lie on the sofa in the parlor, and
while Mrs. Taylor and Mary took care of him the other two ladies would
take the buggy and go and get one of the Old People, and leave one of
themselves with the other one, and----
By this time, without any solicitation, they were at the horse's head and
were beginning to turn him around. The danger was imminent, but Brown
found his voice again and saved himself. He said--
"But ladies, you are overlooking something which makes the plan
impracticable. You see, if you bring one of them home, and one remains
behind with the other, there will be three persons there when one of you
comes back for that other, for some one must drive the buggy back, and
three can't come home in it."
They all exclaimed, "Why, sure-ly, that is so!" and they were, all
perplexed again.
"Dear, dear, what can we do?" said Mrs. Glossop; "it is the most
mixed-up thing that ever was. The fox and the goose and the corn and
things-- Oh, dear, they are nothing to it."
They sat wearily down once more, to further torture their tormented heads
for a plan that would work. Presently Mary offered a plan; it was her
first effort. She said:
"I am young and strong, and am refreshed, now. Take Mr. Brown to our
house, and give him help--you see how plainly he needs it. I will go
back and take care of the Old People; I can be there in twenty minutes.
You can go on and do what you first started to do--wait on the main road
at our house until somebody comes along with a wagon; then send and bring
away the three of us. You won't have to wait long; the farmers will soon
be coming back from town, now. I will keep old Polly patient and cheered
up--the crazy one doesn't need it."
This plan was discussed and accepted; it seemed the best that could be
done, in the circumstances, and the Old People must be getting
discouraged by this time.
Brown felt relieved, and was deeply thankful. Let him once get to the
main road and he would find a way to escape.
Then Mrs. Taylor said:
"The evening chill will be coming on, pretty soon, and those poor old
burnt-out things will need some kind of covering. Take the lap-robe with
you, dear."
"Very well, Mother, I will."
She stepped to the buggy and put out her hand to take it----
That was the end of the tale. The passenger who told it said that when
he read the story twenty-five years ago in a train he was interrupted at
that point--the train jumped off a bridge.
At first we thought we could finish the story quite easily, and we set to
work with confidence; but it soon began to appear that it was not a
simple thing, but difficult and baffling. This was on account of Brown's
character--great generosity and kindliness, but complicated with unusual
shyness and diffidence, particularly in the presence of ladies. There
was his love for Mary, in a hopeful state but not yet secure--just in a
condition, indeed, where its affair must be handled with great tact, and
no mistakes made, no offense given. And there was the mother wavering,
half willing-by adroit and flawless diplomacy to be won over, now, or
perhaps never at all. Also, there were the helpless Old People yonder in
the woods waiting-their fate and Brown's happiness to be determined by
what Brown should do within the next two seconds. Mary was reaching for
the lap-robe; Brown must decide-there was no time to be lost.
Of course none but a happy ending of the story would be accepted by the
jury; the finish must find Brown in high credit with the ladies, his
behavior without blemish, his modesty unwounded, his character for self
sacrifice maintained, the Old People rescued through him, their
benefactor, all the party proud of him, happy in him, his praises on all
their tongues.
We tried to arrange this, but it was beset with persistent and
irreconcilable difficulties. We saw that Brown's shyness would not allow
him to give up the lap-robe. This would offend Mary and her mother; and
it would surprise the other ladies, partly because this stinginess toward
the suffering Old People would be out of character with Brown, and partly
because he was a special Providence and could not properly act so. If
asked to explain his conduct, his shyness would not allow him to tell the
truth, and lack of invention and practice would find him incapable of
contriving a lie that would wash. We worked at the troublesome problem
until three in the morning.
Meantime Mary was still reaching for the lap-robe. We gave it up, and
decided to let her continue to reach. It is the reader's privilege to
determine for himself how the thing came out.
CHAPTER III.
It is more trouble to make a maxim than it is to do right.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
On the seventh day out we saw a dim vast bulk standing up out of the
wastes of the Pacific and knew that that spectral promontory was Diamond
Head, a piece of this world which I had not seen before for twenty-nine
years. So we were nearing Honolulu, the capital city of the Sandwich
Islands--those islands which to me were Paradise; a Paradise which I had
been longing all those years to see again. Not any other thing in the
world could have stirred me as the sight of that great rock did.
In the night we anchored a mile from shore. Through my port I could see
the twinkling lights of Honolulu and the dark bulk of the mountain-range
that stretched away right and left. I could not make out the beautiful
Nuuana valley, but I knew where it lay, and remembered how it used to
look in the old times. We used to ride up it on horseback in those days
--we young people--and branch off and gather bones in a sandy region
where one of the first Kamehameha's battles was fought. He was a
remarkable man, for a king; and he was also a remarkable man for a
savage. He was a mere kinglet and of little or no consequence at the
time of Captain Cook's arrival in 1788; but about four years afterward he
conceived the idea of enlarging his sphere of influence. That is a
courteous modern phrase which means robbing your neighbor--for your
neighbor's benefit; and the great theater of its benevolences is Africa.
Kamehameha went to war, and in the course of ten years he whipped out all
the other kings and made himself master of every one of the nine or ten
islands that form the group. But he did more than that. He bought
ships, freighted them with sandal wood and other native products, and
sent them as far as South America and China; he sold to his savages the
foreign stuffs and tools and utensils which came back in these ships, and
started the march of civilization. It is doubtful if the match to this
extraordinary thing is to be found in the history of any other savage.
Savages are eager to learn from the white man any new way to kill each
other, but it is not their habit to seize with avidity and apply with
energy the larger and nobler ideas which he offers them. The details of
Kamehameha's history show that he was always hospitably ready to examine
the white man's ideas, and that he exercised a tidy discrimination in
making his selections from the samples placed on view.
A shrewder discrimination than was exhibited by his son and successor,
Liholiho, I think. Liholiho could have qualified as a reformer, perhaps,
but as a king he was a mistake. A mistake because he tried to be both
king and reformer. This is mixing fire and gunpowder together. A king
has no proper business with reforming. His best policy is to keep things
as they are; and if he can't do that, he ought to try to make them worse
than they are. This is not guesswork; I have thought over this matter a
good deal, so that if I should ever have a chance to become a king I
would know how to conduct the business in the best way.
When Liholiho succeeded his father he found himself possessed of an
equipment of royal tools and safeguards which a wiser king would have
known how to husband, and judiciously employ, and make profitable. The
entire country was under the one scepter, and his was that scepter.
There was an Established Church, and he was the head of it. There was a
Standing Army, and he was the head of that; an Army of 114 privates under
command of 27 Generals and a Field Marshal. There was a proud and
ancient Hereditary Nobility. There was still one other asset. This was
the tabu--an agent endowed with a mysterious and stupendous power, an
agent not found among the properties of any European monarch, a tool of
inestimable value in the business. Liholiho was headmaster of the tabu.
The tabu was the most ingenious and effective of all the inventions that
has ever been devised for keeping a people's privileges satisfactorily
restricted.
It required the sexes to live in separate houses. It did not allow
people to eat in either house; they must eat in another place. It did
not allow a man's woman-folk to enter his house. It did not allow the
sexes to eat together; the men must eat first, and the women must wait on
them. Then the women could eat what was left--if anything was left--and
wait on themselves. I mean, if anything of a coarse or unpalatable sort
was left, the women could have it. But not the good things, the fine
things, the choice things, such as pork, poultry, bananas, cocoanuts, the
choicer varieties of fish, and so on. By the tabu, all these were sacred
to the men; the women spent their lives longing for them and wondering
what they might taste like; and they died without finding out.
These rules, as you see, were quite simple and clear. It was easy to
remember them; and useful. For the penalty for infringing any rule in
the whole list was death. Those women easily learned to put up with
shark and taro and dog for a diet when the other things were so
expensive.
It was death for any one to walk upon tabu'd ground; or defile a tabu'd
thing with his touch; or fail in due servility to a chief; or step upon
the king's shadow. The nobles and the King and the priests were always
suspending little rags here and there and yonder, to give notice to the
people that the decorated spot or thing was tabu, and death lurking near.
The struggle for life was difficult and chancy in the islands in those
days.
Thus advantageously was the new king situated. Will it be believed that
the first thing he did was to destroy his Established Church, root and
branch? He did indeed do that. To state the case figuratively, he was a
prosperous sailor who burnt his ship and took to a raft. This Church was
a horrid thing. It heavily oppressed the people; it kept them always
trembling in the gloom of mysterious threatenings; it slaughtered them in
sacrifice before its grotesque idols of wood and stone; it cowed them, it
terrorized them, it made them slaves to its priests, and through the
priests to the king. It was the best friend a king could have, and the
most dependable. To a professional reformer who should annihilate so
frightful and so devastating a power as this Church, reverence and praise
would be due; but to a king who should do it, could properly be due
nothing but reproach; reproach softened by sorrow; sorrow for his
unfitness for his position.
He destroyed his Established Church, and his kingdom is a republic today,
in consequence of that act.
When he destroyed the Church and burned the idols he did a mighty thing
for civilization and for his people's weal--but it was not "business."
It was unkingly, it was inartistic. It made trouble for his line. The
American missionaries arrived while the burned idols were still smoking.
They found the nation without a religion, and they repaired the defect.
They offered their own religion and it was gladly received. But it was
no support to arbitrary kingship, and so the kingly power began to weaken
from that day. Forty-seven years later, when I was in the islands,
Kainehameha V. was trying to repair Liholiho's blunder, and not
succeeding. He had set up an Established Church and made himself the
head of it. But it was only a pinchbeck thing, an imitation, a bauble,
an empty show. It had no power, no value for a king. It could not harry
or burn or slay, it in no way resembled the admirable machine which
Liholiho destroyed. It was an Established Church without an
Establishment; all the people were Dissenters.
Long before that, the kingship had itself become but a name, a show. At
an early day the missionaries had turned it into something very much like
a republic; and here lately the business whites have turned it into
something exactly like it.
In Captain Cook's time (1778), the native population of the islands was
estimated at 400,000; in 1836 at something short of 200,000, in 1866 at
50,000; it is to-day, per census, 25,000. All intelligent people praise
Kamehameha I. and Liholiho for conferring upon their people the great
boon of civilization. I would do it myself, but my intelligence is out
of repair, now, from over-work.
When I was in the islands nearly a generation ago, I was acquainted with
a young American couple who had among their belongings an attractive
little son of the age of seven--attractive but not practicably
companionable with me, because he knew no English. He had played from
his birth with the little Kanakas on his father's plantation, and had
preferred their language and would learn no other. The family removed to
America a month after I arrived in the islands, and straightway the boy
began to lose his Kanaka and pick up English. By the time he was twelve
be hadn't a word of Kanaka left; the language had wholly departed from
his tongue and from his comprehension. Nine years later, when he was
twenty-one, I came upon the family in one of the lake towns of New York,
and the mother told me about an adventure which her son had been having.
By trade he was now a professional diver. A passenger boat had been
caught in a storm on the lake, and had gone down, carrying her people
with her. A few days later the young diver descended, with his armor on,
and entered the berth-saloon of the boat, and stood at the foot of the
companionway, with his hand on the rail, peering through the dim water.
Presently something touched him on the shoulder, and he turned and found
a dead man swaying and bobbing about him and seemingly inspecting him
inquiringly. He was paralyzed with fright. His entry had disturbed the
water, and now he discerned a number of dim corpses making for him and
wagging their heads and swaying their bodies like sleepy people trying to
dance. His senses forsook him, and in that condition he was drawn to the
surface. He was put to bed at home, and was soon very ill. During some
days he had seasons of delirium which lasted several hours at a time; and
while they lasted he talked Kanaka incessantly and glibly; and Kanaka
only. He was still very ill, and he talked to me in that tongue; but I
did not understand it, of course. The doctor-books tell us that cases
like this are not uncommon. Then the doctors ought to study the cases
and find out how to multiply them. Many languages and things get mislaid
in a person's head, and stay mislaid for lack of this remedy.
Many memories of my former visit to the islands came up in my mind while
we lay at anchor in front of Honolulu that night. And pictures--pictures
pictures--an enchanting procession of them! I was impatient for the
morning to come.
When it came it brought disappointment, of course. Cholera had broken
out in the town, and we were not allowed to have any communication with
the shore. Thus suddenly did my dream of twenty-nine years go to ruin.
Messages came from friends, but the friends themselves I was not to have
any sight of. My lecture-hall was ready, but I was not to see that,
either.
Several of our passengers belonged in Honolulu, and these were sent
ashore; but nobody could go ashore and return. There were people on
shore who were booked to go with us to Australia, but we could not
receive them; to do it would cost us a quarantine-term in Sydney. They
could have escaped the day before, by ship to San Francisco; but the bars
had been put up, now, and they might have to wait weeks before any ship
could venture to give them a passage any whither. And there were
hardships for others. An elderly lady and her son, recreation-seekers
from Massachusetts, had wandered westward, further and further from home,
always intending to take the return track, but always concluding to go
still a little further; and now here they were at anchor before Honolulu
positively their last westward-bound indulgence--they had made up their
minds to that--but where is the use in making up your mind in this world?
It is usually a waste of time to do it. These two would have to stay
with us as far as Australia. Then they could go on around the world, or
go back the way they had come; the distance and the accommodations and
outlay of time would be just the same, whichever of the two routes they
might elect to take. Think of it: a projected excursion of five hundred
miles gradually enlarged, without any elaborate degree of intention, to a
possible twenty-four thousand. However, they were used to extensions by
this time, and did not mind this new one much.
And we had with us a lawyer from Victoria, who had been sent out by the
Government on an international matter, and he had brought his wife with
him and left the children at home with the servants and now what was to
be done? Go ashore amongst the cholera and take the risks? Most
certainly not. They decided to go on, to the Fiji islands, wait there a
fortnight for the next ship, and then sail for home. They couldn't
foresee that they wouldn't see a homeward-bound ship again for six weeks,
and that no word could come to them from the children, and no word go
from them to the children in all that time. It is easy to make plans in
this world; even a cat can do it; and when one is out in those remote
oceans it is noticeable that a cat's plans and a man's are worth about
the same. There is much the same shrinkage in both, in the matter of
values.
There was nothing for us to do but sit about the decks in the shade of
the awnings and look at the distant shore. We lay in luminous blue
water; shoreward the water was green-green and brilliant; at the shore
itself it broke in a long white ruffle, and with no crash, no sound that
we could hear. The town was buried under a mat of foliage that looked
like a cushion of moss. The silky mountains were clothed in soft, rich
splendors of melting color, and some of the cliffs were veiled in
slanting mists. I recognized it all. It was just as I had seen it long
before, with nothing of its beauty lost, nothing of its charm wanting.
A change had come, but that was political, and not visible from the ship.
The monarchy of my day was gone, and a republic was sitting in its seat.
It was not a material change. The old imitation pomps, the fuss and
feathers, have departed, and the royal trademark--that is about all that
one could miss, I suppose. That imitation monarchy, was grotesque
enough, in my time; if it had held on another thirty years it would have
been a monarchy without subjects of the king's race.
We had a sunset of a very fine sort. The vast plain of the sea was
marked off in bands of sharply-contrasted colors: great stretches of dark
blue, others of purple, others of polished bronze; the billowy mountains
showed all sorts of dainty browns and greens, blues and purples and
blacks, and the rounded velvety backs of certain of them made one want to
stroke them, as one would the sleek back of a cat. The long, sloping
promontory projecting into the sea at the west turned dim and leaden and
spectral, then became suffused with pink--dissolved itself in a pink
dream, so to speak, it seemed so airy and unreal. Presently the
cloud-rack was flooded with fiery splendors, and these were copied on the
surface of the sea, and it made one drunk with delight to look upon it.
From talks with certain of our passengers whose home was Honolulu, and
from a sketch by Mrs. Mary H. Krout, I was able to perceive what the
Honolulu of to-day is, as compared with the Honolulu of my time. In my
time it was a beautiful little town, made up of snow-white wooden
cottages deliciously smothered in tropical vines and flowers and trees
and shrubs; and its coral roads and streets were hard and smooth, and as
white as the houses. The outside aspects of the place suggested the
presence of a modest and comfortable prosperity--a general prosperity
--perhaps one might strengthen the term and say universal. There were no
fine houses, no fine furniture. There were no decorations. Tallow
candles furnished the light for the bedrooms, a whale-oil lamp furnished
it for the parlor. Native matting served as carpeting. In the parlor
one would find two or three lithographs on the walls--portraits as a
rule: Kamehameha IV., Louis Kossuth, Jenny Lind; and may be an engraving
or two: Rebecca at the Well, Moses smiting the rock, Joseph's servants
finding the cup in Benjamin's sack. There would be a center table, with
books of a tranquil sort on it: The Whole Duty of Man, Baxter's Saints'
Rest, Fox's Martyrs, Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy, bound copies of The
Missionary Herald and of Father Damon's Seaman's Friend. A melodeon; a
music stand, with 'Willie, We have Missed You', 'Star of the Evening',
'Roll on Silver Moon', 'Are We Most There', 'I Would not Live Alway', and
other songs of love and sentiment, together with an assortment of hymns.
A what-not with semi-globular glass paperweights, enclosing miniature
pictures of ships, New England rural snowstorms, and the like; sea-shells
with Bible texts carved on them in cameo style; native curios; whale's
tooth with full-rigged ship carved on it. There was nothing reminiscent
of foreign parts, for nobody had been abroad. Trips were made to San
Francisco, but that could not be called going abroad. Comprehensively
speaking, nobody traveled.
But Honolulu has grown wealthy since then, and of course wealth has
introduced changes; some of the old simplicities have disappeared. Here
is a modern house, as pictured by Mrs. Krout:
"Almost every house is surrounded by extensive lawns and gardens
enclosed by walls of volcanic stone or by thick hedges of the
brilliant hibiscus.
"The houses are most tastefully and comfortably furnished; the
floors are either of hard wood covered with rugs or with fine Indian
matting, while there is a preference, as in most warm countries, for
rattan or bamboo furniture; there are the usual accessories of
bric-a-brac, pictures, books, and curios from all parts of the world,
for these island dwellers are indefatigable travelers.
"Nearly every house has what is called a lanai. It is a large
apartment, roofed, floored, open on three sides, with a door or a
draped archway opening into the drawing-room. Frequently the roof
is formed by the thick interlacing boughs of the hou tree,
impervious to the sun and even to the rain, except in violent
storms. Vines are trained about the sides--the stephanotis or some
one of the countless fragrant and blossoming trailers which abound
in the islands. There are also curtains of matting that may be
drawn to exclude the sun or rain. The floor is bare for coolness,
or partially covered with rugs, and the lanai is prettily furnished
with comfortable chairs, sofas, and tables loaded with flowers, or
wonderful ferns in pots.
"The lanai is the favorite reception room, and here at any social
function the musical program is given and cakes and ices are served;
here morning callers are received, or gay riding parties, the ladies
in pretty divided skirts, worn for convenience in riding astride,
--the universal mode adopted by Europeans and Americans, as well as
by the natives.
"The comfort and luxury of such an apartment, especially at a
seashore villa, can hardly be imagined. The soft breezes sweep
across it, heavy with the fragrance of jasmine and gardenia, and
through the swaying boughs of palm and mimosa there are glimpses of
rugged mountains, their summits veiled in clouds, of purple sea with
the white surf beating eternally against the reefs, whiter still in
the yellow sunlight or the magical moonlight of the tropics."
There: rugs, ices, pictures, lanais, worldly books, sinful bric-a-brac
fetched from everywhere. And the ladies riding astride. These are
changes, indeed. In my time the native women rode astride, but the white
ones lacked the courage to adopt their wise custom. In my time ice was
seldom seen in Honolulu. It sometimes came in sailing vessels from New
England as ballast; and then, if there happened to be a man-of-war in
port and balls and suppers raging by consequence, the ballast was worth
six hundred dollars a ton, as is evidenced by reputable tradition. But
the ice-machine has traveled all over the world, now, and brought ice
within everybody's reach. In Lapland and Spitzbergen no one uses native
ice in our day, except the bears and the walruses.
The bicycle is not mentioned. It was not necessary. We know that it is
there, without inquiring. It is everywhere. But for it, people could
never have had summer homes on the summit of Mont Blanc; before its day,
property up there had but a nominal value. The ladies of the Hawaiian
capital learned too late the right way to occupy a horse--too late to get
much benefit from it. The riding-horse is retiring from business
everywhere in the world. In Honolulu a few years from now he will be
only a tradition.
We all know about Father Damien, the French priest who voluntarily
forsook the world and went to the leper island of Molokai to labor among
its population of sorrowful exiles who wait there, in slow-consuming
misery, for death to cone and release them from their troubles; and we
know that the thing which he knew beforehand would happen, did happen:
that he became a leper himself, and died of that horrible disease. There
was still another case of self-sacrifice, it appears. I asked after
"Billy" Ragsdale, interpreter to the Parliament in my time--a half-white.
He was a brilliant young fellow, and very popular. As an interpreter he
would have been hard to match anywhere. He used to stand up in the
Parliament and turn the English speeches into Hawaiian and the Hawaiian
speeches into English with a readiness and a volubility that were
astonishing. I asked after him, and was told that his prosperous career
was cut short in a sudden and unexpected way, just as he was about to
marry a beautiful half-caste girl. He discovered, by some nearly
invisible sign about his skin, that the poison of leprosy was in him.
The secret was his own, and might be kept concealed for years; but he
would not be treacherous to the girl that loved him; he would not marry
her to a doom like his. And so he put his affairs in order, and went
around to all his friends and bade them good-bye, and sailed in the leper
ship to Molokai. There he died the loathsome and lingering death that
all lepers die.
In this place let me insert a paragraph or two from "The Paradise of
the Pacific" (Rev. H. H. Gowen)--
"Poor lepers! It is easy for those who have no relatives or friends
among them to enforce the decree of segregation to the letter, but
who can write of the terrible, the heart-breaking scenes which that
enforcement has brought about?
"A man upon Hawaii was suddenly taken away after a summary arrest,
leaving behind him a helpless wife about to give birth to a babe.
The devoted wife with great pain and risk came the whole journey to
Honolulu, and pleaded until the authorities were unable to resist
her entreaty that she might go and live like a leper with her leper
husband.
"A woman in the prime of life and activity is condemned as an
incipient leper, suddenly removed from her home, and her husband
returns to find his two helpless babes moaning for their lost
mother.
"Imagine it! The case of the babies is hard, but its bitterness is
a trifle--less than a trifle--less than nothing--compared to what
the mother must suffer; and suffer minute by minute, hour by hour,
day by day, month by month, year by year, without respite, relief,
or any abatement of her pain till she dies.
"One woman, Luka Kaaukau, has been living with her leper husband in
the settlement for twelve years. The man has scarcely a joint left,
his limbs are only distorted ulcerated stumps, for four years his
wife has put every particle of food into his mouth. He wanted his
wife to abandon his wretched carcass long ago, as she herself was
sound and well, but Luka said that she was content to remain and
wait on the man she loved till the spirit should be freed from its
burden.
"I myself have known hard cases enough:--of a girl, apparently in
full health, decorating the church with me at Easter, who before
Christmas is taken away as a confirmed leper; of a mother hiding her
child in the mountains for years so that not even her dearest
friends knew that she had a child alive, that he might not be taken
away; of a respectable white man taken away from his wife and
family, and compelled to become a dweller in the Leper Settlement,
where he is counted dead, even by the insurance companies."
And one great pity of it all is, that these poor sufferers are innocent.
The leprosy does not come of sins which they committed, but of sins
committed by their ancestors, who escaped the curse of leprosy!
Mr. Gowan has made record of a certain very striking circumstance. Would
you expect to find in that awful Leper Settlement a custom worthy to be
transplanted to your own country? They have one such, and it is
inexpressibly touching and beautiful. When death sets open the
prison-door of life there, the band salutes the freed soul with a burst
of glad music!
CHAPTER IV.
A dozen direct censures are easier to bear than one morganatic
compliment.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
Sailed from Honolulu.--From diary:
Sept. 2. Flocks of flying fish-slim, shapely, graceful, and intensely
white. With the sun on them they look like a flight of silver
fruit-knives. They are able to fly a hundred yards.