A FEAST IN TAHITI.--We are sometimes ready to imagine that we know
better how to decorate our houses and dinner tables than the people do
who live in the far-off East. But Miss C. F. Gordon-Cumming, who was
invited to a feast in Tahiti, has given a very beautiful description of
the style of entertainment. It would be hard to find anything prettier:
"Good Queen Pomare had lately died, and the islanders were in
mourning for her. At the same time they were welcoming her
successor, King Ariiane, with demonstrations of joy. He was making
a royal progress over his domains, and stopping at Paea, he and his
suite dined in the town-hall. Dinner was laid for three hundred
guests. At one end was a table where the chiefs had prepared to
entertain the royal party, and other tables had been spread by the
families of the neighborhood for themselves and their friends. The
building was decorated with palms and tree-ferns, and festooned all
over with deep fringe made of hybiscus fibre dyed either yellow or
white. There must have been miles of this fringe wreathed about the
hall.
"On sitting down, the table seemed to have a series of white marble
vases arranged along the centre. On looking closely, these vases
turned out to be lumps of the thick, fleshy stalk of the banana
near the root. They were of the purest white. In them were stuck
branches of the thorny wild lemon-tree, and on each thorn were
fastened bunches of gay artificial flowers, either made of colored
leaves, or of the silken white fibre of the arrow-root, or of
bamboo fibre. From some of the banana vases floated silvery plumes
of aerial film like fairy ribbons. This was the snowy reva-reva,
extracted from young cocoa-palm leaves. The worker who produces
this lovely gossamer keeps a split stick stuck in the ground at her
side; into its cleft she fastens one end of each ribbon as she
peels it. It is so very light and soft that but for this precaution
the first faint puff of air would blow it away.
"When the feast was at an end, the guests adorned their hats with
these graceful plumes, and with the pretty, fanciful flowers. Then
everybody adjourned to the grassy shore, and seated there, they
watched the golden moon rising above the calm sea, while companies
of glee-singers filled the air with soft, sweet music."
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We would call the attention of the C. Y. P. R. U. this week to the
article on "St. Elizabeth of Thuringia," by Mrs. Helen S. Conant, and to
"Sea-Anemones," by Miss Sarah Cooper. The boys will learn how to help
the ducks and fishes to an easier life in shady ponds by reading Mr.
Allan Forman's article entitled "Trapping Torups."
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Correct answers to puzzles have been received from Louis H. Hirsh, Max
L., Helen Gardner, Mary Smith, Leonie Foster, Arthur and Freddie, A. E.
Cressingham, Cortland F. Bishop, John P. Todd, Lina Sparks, "North
Star," Lucy Meade, Carl Buckner, William Dick, "Eureka," Carrie B.
Kunkel, Russel B. Beals, E. L. Barnes, Edgar Seeman, Bessie Hyde, Emma
Nusbaum, F. Harris, William F. Harris, Blanche Foster, Kitty C.,
E. N. H., L. R. S., Lucy A. Morse, Harry Beck, Beryl Abbott, Ethel Cox,
Florence Cox, Mamie England, Marion, Addie Goodnow, "Fidelis," L. D. and
F. G., Kate Marshall, and Charlie Lamprey.
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