A newspaper correspondent, Annie Laurie, has told us all about the new
kind of American girls just added to our country:--
"They are as straight as an arrow, and walk as queens walk in fairy
stories; they have great braids of sleek, black hair, soft brown eyes,
and gleaming white teeth; they can swim and ride and sing; and they are
brown with a skin that shines like bronze ... There isn't a worried
woman in Hawaii. The women there can't worry. They don't know how. They
eat and sing and laugh, and see the sun and the moon set, and possess
their souls in smiling peace.
"If a Hawaii woman has a good dinner, she laughs and invites her friends
to eat it with her; if she hasn't a good dinner, she laughs and goes to
sleep,--and forgets to be hungry. She doesn't have to worry about what
the people in the downstairs flat will think if they don't see the
butcher's boy arrive on time. If she can earn the money, she buys a
nice, new, glorified Mother Hubbard; and, if she can't get it, she
throws the old one into the surf and washes it out, puts a new wreath of
fresh flowers in her hair, and starts out to enjoy the morning and the
breezes thereof.
"They are not earnest workers; they haven't the slightest idea that they
were put upon earth to reform the universe,--they're just happy. They
run across great stretches of clear, white sand, washed with resplendent
purple waves, and, when the little brown babies roll in the surf, their
brown mothers run after them, laughing and splashing like a lot of
children. Or, perhaps we see them in gay cavalcades mounted upon
garlanded ponies, adorned by white jasmine wreaths with roses and pinks.
And here in this paradise of laughter and light hearts and gentle music,
there's absolutely nothing to do but to care for the children and old
people and to swim or ride. You couldn't start a 'reform circle' to save
your life; there isn't a jail in the place, nor a tenement quarter, and
there are no outdoor poor. There isn't a woman's club in Honolulu,--not
a club. There was a culture circle once for a few days; a Boston woman
who went there for her health organized it, but it interfered with
afternoon nap-time, so nobody came."
When, hereafter, we talk about worrying women, we must take into
account our Hawaiian sisters, if we will average up the amount of worry
_per capita_, in our nation.