DU ' ', 6z4; -... 8UHR A a39015 01811717 9b *' Y.... **. ^ *.- '* '-..'.' '..... "^, '. ~~ "; ' '., ~. p ' ' < -., -..... * ' '' ''','',,, '.*. '; _. _ ', ' *,,i -.,,. -' ~ ~, ' 1;,,;,.....; ~ -* - -.' *. ' -. ~.,: THE SAYS HAWAII AMERICAN!!" By J'dmuel i~Blvthe__ Illustrations byJayMorria ;,.-: 1 - I..,, iL,,,~~~~~~~rD I,,:~:,:...... -..~. '...: - '.' ' i- o. '. *. /: -*^:.". ' '. ' ^ - -.;,...:,. "~~~,S'", - '. ':..,... r. F.. t' j, 0$'' 2 ' a. '. 1s~..~ E 8 S,;t;'t' -..1, I,. i~ I I,\j::c r.~ ~:..~:.rr ~ ~~. -I U C O "1, t %O I-B! ( "MY DEAR! HE SAYS HAWAII IS AMERICAN!!" By Samuel G.' Dlythe Illustrations by Ray Morris Publisher's note. The commercial and racial statistics as given on pages 9 and 11 have been revised, Mr. Blythe having visited the islands in 1925. *. Initial publication in "The' $aturday Evening Post" Copyright 1926, The Curtis Publishing Company. ( -4. Copyright 1928, Samuel G. Blythe. Published by NELSON "PETE" PRINGLE Honolulu, T. H. Star-Bulletin Press Printed in U. S. A. MY DEAR! HE SAYS HAWAII IS AMERICAN! O N the fifth day out from San Francisco I noticed what seemed to be a new agitation among some of my deck neighbors. A further problem had encountered them. Until that time they had been concerned principally over D how they should tip the Chinese cabin and table -3 boys, and whether a dollar from all three would be enough for the deck steward. They had worried over that from the Golden Gate to the twenty-third parallel, but now it was apparent that something else had risen. cn This was important, for poppa and momma were in close and earnest conversation over it, and Aunt Lizzie put in a good many words of counsel and advice, as was Aunt Lizzie's way. She knew everything, that woman, or thought she did, which amounted to the same thing as far as broadcasting was concerned. Poppa was meekly resigned to her, and momma listened raptly to her. Aunt Lizzie had something on the air every minute, mostly to the effect that the Chinese boys aboard the boat are not used to the American scale of living, and that fifty cents apiece would be large sums for them to have all at once. Probably most deleterious and debasing sums, so far as their personal morals were concerned, after they reached port, and had these vast amounts to squander. "I tell you," said Aunt Lizzie firmly, "we must be watchful or they will cheat us every time we turn around. Why, when Mrs. Johnson went to Paris that time she lost I don't know how much in ex- e change." ' [3] I was dozing in my chair, but that word "exchange," hammering on my drowsy senses, woke me up. Exchange-exchange-in Honolulu? What the "I guess that's so," poppa agreed. "They are all robbers, them exchange fellers. The thing to do is to read the papers every morning and see what the rate is and stick to that. Yes, sir-ree! That's the thing to do." "But," protested Aunt Lizzie, "there won't be any papers until after we get there, and they'll cheat us on the pier, for of course our American money won't be any good." American money-not good-in Honolulu! That had me blinking, and I turned to see if they were serious. They were. It was a deadly earnest momma who impaled me with an eager eye. "Oh," she said, "I thought you were asleep. We don't know just what to do with our American money so we won't lose anything when we get to Honolulu. Can you tell me the rate of exchange?" "Exchange?" I repeated dully. "Exchange?" "Yes," she broke in. "How much do we get in Hawaiian money for our American money?" "But, madam," I said, "Hawaiian money is American money." "Wh-a-at?" "Certainly. Hawaii is a territory of the United States." Momma looked at me with mingled incredulity, alarm and pity. "You can't mean it!" she protested. "But I do mean it. That is the fact." That was too much for momma. She laughed. The idea was really funny. She must tell it to poppa and Aunt Lizzie, and there was derision in the telling [4] and superiority, and a crushing of me back to where I belonged. "My dear!" she shrilled. "My dear! He says Hawaii is American!" Of course after that there was nothing left for me to do but jump overboard or go forward and talk to the flying fishes. I chose the drier part, but the thing seemed so incredible that I decided I must get more information about it than the flying fishes had, and I sought out the purser. "Some people up on deck don't know that Hawaii belongs to the United States," I ventured, expecting the purser to be astonished. He took the information calmly. "Huh!" he said. "That's nothing. Half the people who come over here don't know it either." "Half?" "Oh, well, probably that's too high an estimate. A quarter anyhow." "You're kidding." "I am not. They come to me and ask what sort of postage stamps they use, and what the rate of exchange is, and can I change their American money into Hawaiian, and is it hard to pass the customs, and what is the duty on American goods in Honolulu, and all that sort of thing-come in shoals, I tell you. They think Hawaii is a foreign country and most of them do not believe you when you say it isn't." Inasmuch as Hawaii has been an integral part of the United States since August 12, 1898-almost thirty years-this seemed incredible, and I started some investigations of my own, and experiments. I found that poppa and momma and Aunt Lizzie were not the only ones on the ship who thought Hawaii was a foreign kingdom, or possession, or something [5] not American in any event. I said casually in the smoking room that the purser was running short of Hawaiian money and those who hadn't changed their American money would better hurry, and four men dashed out for the purser's desk-four Americans, three of whom are prosperous business men and the other a doctor. This and two or three more similar experiments convinced me the purser was right, and when I got ashore I looked into the matter further. The result of those investigations was astonishing. Postmaster MacAdam, at Honolulu, showed me customs tags on parcels from many parts of the United States, sent by post, which showed that the persons who sent the packages didn't know that Hawaii is American territory, and that the postmasters who transmitted the parcels and sold the stamps for them did not know it either. One morning in Hilo, Postmaster Daly showed me four customs tags that had come in that day from the United States. The inquiry from American tourists as to what the postage is to the United States and what sort of stamps they must use is constant at every postoffice in the territory. A doctor friend of mine showed me a letter he had from one of the largest manufacturers of surgical instruments in the United States. This letter acknowledged receipt of his order for some instruments, and made elaborate inquiries as to exactly what steps must be taken by the manufacturers to comply with the Hawaiian customs regulations, and could the doctor tell them just what the duty would be? One of the leading publishing houses in the United States sent back a remittance a Honolulu friend of mine made in accordance with one of their coupon [6] offers-tear off the coupon and remit-and said that the coupons, as printed, did not apply to foreign countries, but only to the United States. And preserved as a curio by one of the civic organizations of Honolulu is a letter, written by a New England congressman, on House of Representatives paper, dated at Washington and inclosed in an official envelope, addressed: "To the American Consul, Honolulu, Hawaii." Momma and poppa and Aunt Lizzie were not unique. Evidently it takes a long time for such news as the taking over of a group of eight islands, aggregating 6500 square miles of territory, and containing some 300,000 people, to get around among us. There is the experience of Mrs. George Mellen, a Virginia girl, who went to Honolulu and married a Seattle man who lived there. Mrs. Mellen was brought over to the United States in 1924 by the Republican National Committee to make speeches for Coolidge, and she made them in many parts of the mainland. Always, the ladies were interested in this speaker from far-away Hawaii, and when they discovered, as women will, that she had married there, they always said, "Of course you had to learn the language." "Why, no," the Hawaiian lady answered politely; "that wasn't necessary." "But how do you talk to your husband?" Well, there you are. Here, on the Pacific one hand we have Hawaii; and here, over 2000 miles away, we have the mainland; and to a considerable extent, the residents of the mainland have no more idea to whom Hawaii belongs, save that it is "foreign," than they have of the location and dominion of Eritrea. Naturally, this makes these island Americans sore and, [7] naturally, it makes them rather sad and forlorn, for they are running a fertile, prosperous and beautiful territory, in the middle of the Pacific, paying more Federal taxes than a long list of states that sport a star in the flag, doing more business than a lot of states, also; and, to many of our mainland people, they are nothing more than some sort of territorial foundling or orphan where the ukuleles and the Hawaiian songs on the phonograph records-maybecome from. Not to labor the point unduly, American influence has been dominant in Hawaii for more than 100 years, and Hawaii has been an American topic all that time and was a tremendously live one during the last Cleveland and the first McKinley administrations. It isn't so long ago that Senator Morgan, of Alabama, with greater vision than most of his colleagues, was standing in the Senate and declaring that we must have Hawaii; and not so long as that when President Cleveland and his Paramount Commissioner Blount were insisting that we did not want it. The revolutionthe provisional government-Sanford B. Dole-the Wilcox uprising-annexation —all these were firstpage stories in all our newspapers for months and months, made even more sensational because of the romantic situation of them-the Sandwich IslandsHawaii-a story-book land. So we took the islands, and they are ours forever, as is proper, for we civilized them, even if we did pretty well by ourselves during that process. The English had a chance to get them, but let it slip. It is always interesting to speculate on what an Englishman, seeing modern Hawaii, thinks of that diplomatic maneuver. Still, the English made a considerable number of blunders in those early days. There was [8] that little matter of letting the North American colonies get away from them, for example. The great hope of the Americans in Hawaii is statehood; and looking at it from one angle, that hope is not unjustified, because there is much more to Hawaii than climate, flame trees, flowers, palms, surfboarding, ukuleles, hulas, steel-string guitars, poi and leis. Much. For example, ships entering and leaving the harbors of Hawaii in 1927 grossed 6,350,727 tons. There were 72,524 pupils in the schools. The bank deposits were $75,024,292.47. The exports were $100,145,020, of which $59,043,395 was sugar and most of an item of $34,789,534 pineapples canned. The total sugar crop for 1927 was about 810,000 tons and approximately 9,000,000 cases-cases, not cans-of canned pineapples were shipped to all parts of the world. There is a good basis for statehood therebetter by far than most of the states showed when admitted, and better, also, than a good many of the states have now. But there is a problem-a racial problem-that may withhold statehood from Hawaii for a long time. At least, there is no practical solution of it in sight at present. The population of Hawaii was 333,420 on June 30, 1927. Of these, 34,525 were Americans, mostly, with some British, some Germans, and some Russians. There were 25,198 Chinese, 52,124 Filipinos, and.133,242 Japanese. In addition, there were 28,417 Portuguese, and Koreans, Spaniards, Porto Ricans and other races in smaller numbers. The nubbin of this racial situation is the Japanese. The Portuguese were originally brought in as laborers in the sugar fields. They remained and they are good citizens. The trouble with the Japanese is that though nominally he is American, he sends all his money back [9] to Japan, close observers in Hawaii say, pays very small taxes, and remains entirely Nipponese in all his affiliations and sympathies. Whatever the status of the parents who came to Hawaii as immigrants, there is no doubt as to the status of the children. They are American, and when they reach voting age undoubtedly they will vote. The immigrant Japanese does not show much interest in politics, but his children will, because they are being educated Americanwise in American schools, and the Japanese have very large families. They are a fecund people. This extraordinary mixture of races in Hawaii came primarily from the labor necessities of the sugar planters, and later of the pineapple planters. The native Hawaiian is a fine swimmer and a good fisherman, and can sing mournfully for hours without end, and wear a hibiscus behind his ear and a lei around his neck; but the idea of getting into the sugar fields and laboring there did not appeal to him. He was not raised to be a worker. Why should he work? He could grow a little taro, find plenty of fruit; and there were fish in the sea, wine in the palm and pigs in the brush after the white man came. What more could any man want, in a benign climate and amid surroundings entirely beautiful? So the planters brought in Chinese, and these were sufficient until the islands became American territory and the Chinese Exclusion Law operated automatically against further Chinese importation. Then came Portuguese, Japanese, and so on, with the Filipinos as the present source of supply. The planters have ransacked the world for labor, which must be cheap labor and strong labor. Labor is the dominant factor in the production of these great Hawaiian staples, [10 sugar and pineapples. Running parallel with this is the political situation presented by this heterogeneous population, and the two combined make Hawaii a most interesting study for sociologists and political economists, and a most difficult problem for politicians. The bogy of Japanese domination, which is perfectly demonstrable by any person with a pencil, a bit of paper, and a familiarity with the vital statistics of the islands, is always in the minds of those who have a real concern in the future of the islands, as it is always in the minds of the men at Washington who have to do with such phases of our Government. The Japanese in the islands meet it with assertions that they are Americans, and not Japanese; but nobody who knows the Japanese does more with these assertions than listen politely to them. The truth of it is that the entire matter, in its eventualities, rests with the thousands and thousands of little Japanese boys and girls now going to American schools in Hawaii, wearing American clothes, learning to talk American, reciting the pledge to the flag and otherwise -and seemingly-absorbing Americanism just as American children on the mainland absorb it. If they become real Americans there will be no trouble in Hawaii; but if they remain Japanese, with American veneer, which is what most people over there and many elsewhere fear, there is always the possibility of Japanese political domination-internally, of course, for the Japanese are already considerably more than a third of the population-133,242 of a total of 333,420-and since they are increasing rapidly through the birth rate, there may be perplexing and troublesome external complications. Some years ago, on one of my visits to Japan, one [11] of the great Japanese statesmen said to me, when we were discussing the California-Japanese situation: "We do not need to go to war with any country if the Japanese are allowed unrestricted opportunities for immigration to that country and all privileges of citizenship. Our statistics show that while it takes a Caucasian race eighty-five years to double itself, the Japanese people double in thirty-five years. Give us time and free opportunities for immigration, and we can dominate any white country where our people can live-such, for instance, as Hawaii and California." I do not know if the statesman's figures are scientifically correct. Certainly, he thought they were, and, certainly, his theory has worked out and is working out constantly in Hawaii. One look at the Japanese quarter in Honolulu, say, will show that, and the population figures cinch it. Therefore, while the Japanese problem seems, to the Hawaiians, an imminent and pressing one, it, in reality, is of the future in its final demonstration; but it is none the less worrisome, at that. So, as man is so constituted that he must worry, and as every natural tendency in Hawaii is favorable to peace of mind, contentment of body and enjoyment of the senses, the Hawaiians worry about the Japs, but only now and then. Nobody can worry long in Hawaii. The whole institution forbids it. Tomorrow is far away over there. All that matters is today. Nevertheless, there were a few little things that worried me when I was there last September. I had been in Honolulu before, stopping off from transpacific liners after the usual manner, scurrying about the city, rushing out to Waikiki for a perfect futile attempt to ride a surfboard like a Kanaka, and so on; but this time I stayed for nearly a month in the islands [12 and had an opportunity for a much-needed investigation into matters relating to native sports, pastimes, customs, ballyhoo and come-hither, and so on, as they are practiced by the people, one and all. My first inquiry was into the subject of leis. The lei, as is widely known, is an indigenous or, speaking scientifically, autochthonal wreath, made variously of flowers, feathers or paper, and hung in prodigal profusion around the necks of all who participate in any way in anything that is going on; especially around the necks of those who come to the Paradise of the Pacific, which is a nifty little term used extensively by the tourist bureau, in the capacity of paradise seekers-potential paradiseans, as you might say. When you arrive in Honolulu, or in any other place in Hawaii, they automatically hang leis on you. When you depart they mechanically hang leis on you. When you eat, when you go to a party, when you dance, when you walk, ride or do anything else save swimthey hang leis on you. It is a sort of ritual, a survival and standardization of an ancient Hawaiian custom. The natives decorated themselves with wreaths of feathers and flowers, but it remained for the advance of civilization to make the paper lei possible. One great thing civilization did for the Hawaiians, aside from putting them into pants, was to give them the paper lei, and it has been an incalculable asset for the real-estate dealers, hotel keepers and steamship managers. Also, it has not been so bad for the laundrymen. Half a dozen paper leis around any neck on a hot day, on a steamship pier, say-even around a neck that is most elegantly nonsudoriferous-will dye all garments to the waist a brilliant orange or yellowthe paper leis are mostly orange-hued, as that was [13 the royal color-and impart to the skin a lasting ocherous tinge that will be a pleasant reminder of the festivity for days to come. The lei, to be sure, is no novelty. Thousands of tourists' homes in America are decorated with leis, hanging over mirrors or draped on the corners of pictures, or on lighting fixtures, brought back as souvenirs and testimonials of Honolulu. The steamship companies keep several factories running for their production and use them lavishly, possibly to promote the proper Hawaiian spirit and distract the minds of the passengers from chance defects in the service. It is very difficult, almost impossible, to point out to the captain or first officer of a ship, malfeasance of your steward or iniquities in the chowwhen one has strung around his neck a few paper leis donated by the steamship company in the interests of gaiety and the holiday heart; very. Still, there has never been a proper scientific inquiry into the lei, and such an inquiry seemed essential. Therefore one was undertaken along these lines: (1) What is the annual production of leis from all sources? (2) What is the actual cervical breaking point under the strain of leis, as follows: (a) paper, (b) flower, (c) flowers that are mostly wild ginger, (d) mixed paper and flower? (3 What is the point of saturation, on a hot steamship pier, when the orange-colored lei ceases to be a decoration and becomes an active fulvous dyeing agent? This may seem an unimportant and mayhap frivolous investigation; but it is not, because the great future of Hawaii, in one sense, is a tourist future, and a future that comprehends Americans and others desirous of a benign climate in beautiful surroundings [14] going to Hawaii and remaining there calm and contented-and especially calm. The commercial development of Hawaii is pretty well in hand, and so is the land development. There is not much chance for a settler there, meaning a man who goes to take up land and grow crops, because practically all the available sugar and pineapple land is fully under control. There will be commercial expansion, of course, as the territory grows, along mercantile lines; but the real future of Hawaii, with its present foundation, is a tourist and home future-a place to visit and a place to live, both delightful. Wherefore, as the lei plays a most important part in Hawaiian life, it is well to fix its exact status, which is now done for the first time, as follows: The annual production of leis, from all sources, including the steamship companies, is 4865 gross tons, of which one and a half tons have personally been around my neck. To put it another way: The leis used annually in Hawaii, on the piers at San Francisco and Los Angeles, aboard ships and elsewhere, if laid end to end, would reach from Laupahoehoe to Hanamaulu and back as far as Waimanalo. The actual cervical breaking point, under the burden of leis, is twenty-one point six. That is to say, the average adult can maintain a fraction more than twenty-one leis, provided a reasonable proportion of these are paper, without suffering from anything more serious than strained tendons and mayhap a blurring of the eyes and a ringing in the ears caused by the heavy odor of wild ginger; but it must not be overlooked that if the leis are all of sweet peas and wild ginger, the ratio of endurance constantly decreases, and on a hot day only the most muscular can withstand more than thirteen to fifteen. As a considerable [15] The average adult can maintain a fraction more than twenty-one Leis. number of days have a certain amount of heat, and as steamship piers and sheds ordinarily are from sixteen to thirty-seven degrees hotter than the open air, these figures must be modified to suit individual cases, with the caution that a dozen leis are sufficient for all ordinary incomings and outgoings, feasts, parties or functions. Concerning the third section of this exhaustive inquiry, there can be no fixed rule further than the statement that at 85 Fahrenheit the orange-colored paper lei begins to dissolve, and at 95 it is practically fluid and exerting a wide and penetrating coloring influence, with an especial affiliation for collars, shirts and underclothing, if any. This last conclusion is the result of personal experience and experiment, and not of observation. It was 90 on the pier. The ship that was to take me to Australia sailed at four o'clock. The baggage of my party had not arrived at four o'clock owing to the fact, as I learned later, that the porter at my hotel always took his steel-stringed guitar lesson at that time in the hope of getting a job in a Hawaiian orchestra, of which there are 5792 touring the worldand, by the way, making heavy inroads in the lei market, the lei being, mostly, the only thing Hawaiian about them. I was, at the hour of four, snugly wrapped up in some eighteen or twenty leis, mostly flower leis and weighing in the neighborhood of fourteen stone ten. It would have been discourteous to take them off. It was imperative to do a lot of telephoning, to climb up from the pier to see the captain of the boat-and the gangplank was long and steep-to interview the agent; in short, to hold up the ship. These various progresses of a middle-aged writing [17] RAY Moolis. The baggage of our party had not arrived. person weighing 180 pounds, without ornament, established the basis for the conclusion. Leis liquify at exactly 95 Fahrenheit, and if any person desires an orange-colored shirt, undershirt, neck, chest, ears, chin, Adam's apple or other facial or cervical or pectoral what not, that is the way to procure same. When the baggage finally came; when, on the side of the ship away from the pier, the leis had been thrown overboard; when we passed Diamond Head and headed for the equator-a bright-yellow passenger might have been seen furtively skulking to his cabin to dig out his nailbrush, his soap, his abrasives and his emollients and see if he ever could make himself approximately white again. He did, but it was not for days-and thus he learned about leis. As for Hawaiian songs, the subject of my next inquiry, the results obtained were equally illuminating, and were secured by the same intensive methods. To be sure, there has been an occasional Hawaiian singer on the mainland, and I have been reliably informed that a certain number of Hawaiian phonograph records have been made-a few million, more or less, to be exact-but Hawaiian singing right where it originated are two different matters-also indifferent, it may be. I investigated it right on the spot. After listening to 143 Hawaiian orchestras, bands of singers, beach boys with ukuleles, boating parties, street strollers, amateurs, professionals and others not classed, and including the pests in the hotels, it was authoritatively ascertained that there is but one Hawaiian song; not many-only one. This one Hawaiian song is composed of four wails, a long lamentation, three plaints, a few odd bemoanings and a couple of deplores, sung to a musical scale that has but four notes, all minor, and accompanied usually by several [19] tearful, lei-wrapped and walnut-colored persons, who sob bitterly as they twang the strings of their guitars, having in stock and displaying as occasion arises a separate and shuddery twang for each brand of sorrow expressed by the song. It seems that in the early native days, before the missionaries got after them, a native chief died one day, and his people rallied round and began to wail for him. This wailing made such a hit that they kept it up for a week. Being creative artists and shy on business sense, as all creative artists are in books and none are in real life, they neglected to get their production copyrighted, and other tribes and villages stole their stuff. Thus the Hawaiian song originated, and thus it persists to this day. As stated, there is but one song. There seem to be many, but that is an auricular illusion. The difference, or seeming difference, lies in the manner of singing. If the singer had adenoids, he gets one effect and seems to be singing another song; and if his nasal passages are obstructed, he gives another impression of novelty. But the song really never changes. Normally a laughing and happy people, the Hawaiians are hopelessly sad when they sing, and so are a good many of their auditors. Castle says that the original native singing was a gutteral chant, with a four-note range, and that the first modern Hawaiian song was written in 1868. It has been rewritten a thousand times since then, but not by Hawaiians. By New Yorkers, mostly in Tin Pan Alley. The real Hawaiians do not do so well with these songs, although they sing them. What they want is a good wail and a stocky, well-nourished bemoaning they can set their teeth into. Given that, and permission to go to it, and they will lament for hours at a time, and get a lot of pleasure out of it[20 ] more than those who hear them, by 96 per cent, except, of course, the naturally down-hearted among the tourists. I have observed that tourists, trying to make the grade and live at the big hotels on small resources, listen avidly to a Hawaiian song after they have had their laundry bills or something like that. The Hawaiian song, being also a native institution and of the ancient people and the soil, is used in exactly the same manner as the lei. So convinced are all Hawaiians that all visitors dote on having some singers wail at them during every meal, say, or at any gathering, function, show, exhibition, excursion or what not, that said singers are turned loose inevitably. Like the lei, the thing is automatic. Where any visitors congregate, there also Hawaiian musicians congregate. According to the latest census figures there were but 21,271 native Hawaiians in the islands, together with 7816 Asiatic Hawaiians and 13,134 Caucasian Hawaiians, or a total, roundly, of pure bloods and mixed bloods, of 42,000. The figures seem inadequate. I heard more than that, personally, lamenting whatever it was they were bemoaning. But we must have them. It is part of the standardized Hawaiian scheme. These investigations concluded, I turned my attention to surfing, to riding in atop the glistening breakers that scatter their pearls on the golden sands of the beach at Waikiki, as the advertisements say: riding in on a surf board as the bronzed and graceful beach boys ride in, a diversion that is typically Hawaiian, that is exhilarating and exciting, and at the command of one and all. Simple as can be. Nothing required but a surf board, which are numerously for hire, a willing disposition and the knowing how to [ 21 ] Listen avidly to a Hawaiian song after they have had their laundry bills. swim. There is the Pacific. There are the breakers. There is the beach. All you have to do is to paddle out atop the surf board to the first or second line of breakers, turn the nose of your surf board to the beach, wait for a wave and come in a-whooping, riding on the crest of the wave like whatever it is that rides atop wave crests-like a Kanaka beach boy, let i us say-a picture of grace, of daring, of muscular beauty and of Neptunish or mermaidish, as the case may be, abandon and enjoyment. That is positively all. See small bills. But hold: On reviewing these remarks it occurs to me that there are a few minor details it would be well to have in mind before beginning the day joyously by surfing in to the beach half a dozen times or so 14 before breakfast. As stated above, all you have to do is what it outlined; but before you do it it may be judicious to assay yourself along these lines: Are you an expert swimmer? Is your heart all right? Can you stay under water for appreciably longer than the average dive? Do you know how to take the waves at exactly the right moment? How old are you? Who is your next of kin? Which shin do you prefer to have barked and is the nose dive or the splash your favorite way of falling off a moving object into salt water? How good are you at maintaining a balance on a wriggly object seven to ten feet long and eighteen inches wide? Is exercise harder than running up long flights of stairs your forte? Can you loaf around in the water for a couple of hours and enjoy it? In short, are you twenty-five years old and as agile as an acrobat, or are you more than forty and inclined to be a bit pursy and short of breath? ~1 My room at the Moana Hotel, facing the surfing places, had a balcony, and I stood on it when I first?j}~~~~~ [23] came and watched the surf riders careering in on their narrow planks. It seemed absurdly easy and it surely was most exciting-an adventure. Those Kanaka boys paddled out a mile or so, turned their boards in the proper manner, hooked onto the wave at exactly the right moment, jumped up on the board and rode in, waving their arms and singing, pictures of grace and skill. Why, a child could do it! No trick at all. And fun-gosh, what fun it must be! It seemed like a cinch to me, for I am a good swimmer, and do a lot of it. So I clambered into my bathing suit and went down to the beach. "Gimme a surf board," I said to a beach boy. "Know how?" he asked, and there was a certain expression about his lips I did not like-sort of a pitying smile. "No," I told him with a trace of annoyance in my voice; "but I can learn, can't I?" "Mebbe," he said, and off we went. He showed me how to mount the board and how to paddle with the least exertion, and presently we were out to the second line of breakers. I noticed that most of the surfers were far beyond, at the first line, where the breakers were heavier. "Why not go out there?" I asked him. "These will do for now," he said, and he smiled again, that oh-you-poor-fish smile. And he was right. Inside of twenty minutes I had proved I was a poor fish-a very poor fish-practically no fish at all. He told me how to do it, headed up my board, and we waited for a breaker. Presently one came curling along. The plot was to begin paddling before the breaker reached me, to get the board under way, to be in the proper position to have the wave catch me, and as it caught me to let Nature take its course and go [24] careering in atop the wave, a graceful and imposing specimen of athletic beauty and skill, riding triumphantly shoreward, uttering wild native cries. "Now!" he said, and I began paddling furiously. The beach boy left me like a shot, standing on his board. I flailed the water frantically, swallowing plenty, and waited for the grand sensation. It did not come. Presently I got enough spray out of my eyes to see objects dimly, and my beach boy was far away, my wave was far away, and I was dubbing around in the trough of the sea not four feet from where I had been before the breaker came. "Pshaw!" I said, or words to that effect. "If he can do that I can. It's only a knack." And I looked around for another breaker. I saw one, but not quite quickly enough. It saw me first. Plosh! It hit me with the impact of forty pile drivers, and next thing I knew I was practically one mile beneath the surface of the water, trying to claw my way to the top. Eventually I got there, and I discovered my board bobbing up and down several rods away. I swam meditatively to it, meditatively and slowly, because I was about two-thirds full of salt water I had engulfed on my way down to the bottom, loaded almost to the Plimsoll mark. I clambered on the board, jettisoned as much of my cargo as I was able, and waited for my boy to return, the sore and salty sport of every breaker that came along, buffeted here and there by the waves, banged up and down on the board, but still game. It was only a knack. I was sure of that. The boy came paddling swiftly back. "Why didn't you come?" he asked. "Oh," I said, "I wasn't intending to come that time. I wanted to make some observations of the coral on the bottom. All ready now though. Let's go!" [25 ] "Now"-he said. He turned the board. I heard a hissing and a roaring behind me. Towering above me like a giant green wall was a wave-a veritable tidal wave it looked to me. I began paddling, beating the water and kicking my feet. Glory! I caught the wave! I was borne along with it at the speed of an express train. It was marvelous. It was transcendent. It was the crux of adventure. I began to shout my triumph. Then the dodgasted board rolled over and I went down half a mile or so under that wave and recargoed myself with salt water sufficient for a long voyage. The boy said I was not in the middle of the board, but too much on one side. Possibly. Well, ten or fifteen breakers came along and I made a gallant struggle with each of them, and got no nearer the shore than I was originally. I was banged about on the board, slammed, in the shallow part, on the sharp coral, filled to the brim with salt water. My exhaust sounded like a 400-horse-power Liberty engine, the skin was off my shins and off my arms and off several other places. I could feel my good old reliable heart pounding like a triphammer, and I finally paddled wearily back to shore. I passed beach boys and young men and young women riding in erect on their boards, perfectly balanced, shrieking with joy, symbols of grace and agility and poise, and I stopped for a spell to look them over and get my breath. All young. Not a gray hair or a bald head to be seen. "Youth," I said to myself; "Youth. That's the answer." And it is, so far as surf-boarding is concerned. There are a few oldsters who can do it, but they learned when they were young. However, not entirely convinced, I tried it again next day, having had a good rest, plenty of linament, and being en [27 Then-plah I dowed with a certain obstinacy in such matters that forbids defeat. Forbids, did I say? I mean invites. If you are too far back on your board, my tutor told me, the board will not move. He was right. If you are too far forward, the board will do a nose dive and so will you, or any other sort that happens. Right again. If you are too far on one side or the other, you will roll off and under the board. Right for the third time. It was uncanny how right that boy was-and humiliating how wrong I was. He was patient. I stuck until the bitter end. I had had two little rides out of twenty tries, and was pretty cocky. "Now I'll stand up," I said, "and ride in." He looked at me with a sad expression in his liquid Hawaiian eyes. "All right," he told me. "I'll get behind. When I holler, you stand up." Everything was set. I saw myself riding in like the other surf masters who were shooting gloriously by me. "Now!" screamed the boy, giving my board a tremendous shove. Whereupon a middle-aged writing person, who should have known better, clambered to his feet and stood, for fifteen seconds, on that squirmy, fast-flying board. Erect! Monarch of the sea! Emperor of the surf! Then-plah! Down! Down! The only thing that stopped me was a bed of coral, with its edges sharper than razors. That stopped me immediately-and painfully. I clambered up through the green and salty sea, rose like a porpoise, spouting water and exuding it from every pore. The board was forty feet away. It seemed like forty miles. I dragged myself upon it. I paddled in, took assay of my cuts and bruises, squeezed some [29 ] A large and satisfactory hole. more salt water out of my system and tottered back to the hotel. The room boy came in as I was binding up my cuts. "Have a good time?" he grinned. "Not so very." "Well, master," he said, "it ain't a game for nobody but the young." He was right too. It certainly is remarkable how explicitly accurate those Kanaka boys can be. "You take the outrigger canoe," he said, as he handed me the iodine for my coral cuts. So I took one and rode the surf in a dignified and suitable manner. It was a humiliating thing to do, but not so humiliating as what I had been doing. Surfing is a wonderful sport, but only for the young, all advertisements to the contrary notwithstanding. Mr. C. Brickwood Lyman drove us out to Kilauea from Hilo, through as rainy a rain as I had seen in many a day, acting as driver, troubador, raconteur, philosopher, folklore expert, botanist, ornithologist, legend teller and adviser on all matters temporal. A visit to Kilauea is incomplete unless Brick is along. His apologia for the quiescent state of the volcano at present is patriotic, eloquent, convincing, and loyal to this celebrated demonstration of the forces of Nature, which, as noted, is not working at the moment. Brick's description of the lake of fire that formerly existed, of the vast eruptions that had occurred in the past, of the stupefying grandeur and monstrous magnificence of the mountain when it does work, instead of loafing on its job as it has been doing for a long time now, made it quite unessential to view the crater. As a matter of form, however, we went across the lava field and had a look at the hole, which is a large and satisfactory hole, but not much of a volcano, as [31 ] volcanoes that are supposed to be on the job are reckoned. So far as can be ascertained by the layman, Kilauea is not only quiescent but in a coma. The livest thing in its neighborhood was a hot-dog stand a quarter of a mile away, where the hot dogs are cooked by steam that issues through a crack in the' lava, thus, it would seem, making the cost of production so low that a cut rate for the dogs was anticipated. However, the spirit of commercialism prevailed even there on the brink of one of Nature's marvels, and the hot dogs were retailed at the usual price. Concerning the moment when Kilauea may be expected to quit loafing and get back into the real volcano business again, there is some difference of opinion. The professors at the observatory, who feel Kilauea's pulse every day, watch the seismograph constantly and are especially in touch as to all symptoms, manifestations and flutters, are guarded in their opinions, and hedge what they say with numerous scientific technicalities. Not so with Aleck Lancaster, the guide, who says he is part Cherokee and has been taking people across the lava to the crater for fortyseven years, man and boy. Aleck has an intimate acquaintance with Kilauea, knows her moods and her many little ways, and he says that in about three years she will burst out again and get on her job. "I figger," says Aleck, "that the internal combustions will have combusted enough by that time for her to put on a show." Which seems fair enough, and even without an active crater there is much to see in the national park that surrounds the mountain, and the trip is worth taking. I came away with many lasting impressions, not the least of which was the elderly and very fat [32] man, his coat on his arm, puffing like a grampus after his three-mile walk across the lava, swabbing his face with his handkerchief as he gazed down at the great hole of the crater. "One extinct volcano," he wheezed, "looking at another." I was at Hilo when they found Rodgers and his men, not so far away in terms of miles, but as far as Chicago in accessibility. The world had been hanging on the fate of these men for nine days, and the Government and newspapers, with airplanes and ships, ransacking the surface of the Pacific in unceasing effort to discover them or make sure that they were dead. Word came one afternoon into the port of Nawiliwili that the missing plane had been found, that the men were alive and that their machine was being towed in. Here was a sensation-a coming back from the depths-a newspaper story of extraordinary magnitude and interest. A local correspondent of one of the Honolulu papers heard the news and got himself a boat to go out and verify it. He went out, met the wrecked airplane and its crew, talked to them, got his story and hurried back, far ahead of the slow towboat. Then, cautious lad, he sat down and wrote the telegram that will be classic in newspaper circles for many years. "Rodgers and his men have been found," he wired his paper, where nobody had slept much for nine days, waiting for news of the crew; where the presses were standing for the extras telling of their death or rescue; where the men who send the news abroad were feverish in their anxiety to get some inkling of their fate. "Rodgers and his men have been found and are being towed in here. I have been out and talked to them. [33 ] Do you want the story?" And he sat down and waited for the editor to tell him to send it along. They gave Rodgers and his men a heart-warming reception at Honolulu when they finally got theregave them a real Hawaiian reception, for these folks know how to do those things. They know how to receive the visitor, whether he drifts in from the clouds, is borne in by the sea or just happens along. A kindly, hospitable, cordial, generous people, living on an island of unexampled beauty, with seven other beautiful islands stretched along adjoining, the whole our insular territory and one of our great national assets. An unforgettable people in an unforgettable land. After many thousand miles of travel since I sailed from Honolulu, through many strange lands, I look back on Hawaii and Honolulu and remember the cool trade winds blowing across the mountains, the green valleys misty with the dewy rain, the flame trees bordering the streets, the rainbows across the greens at the golf club, the serene dignity of Diamond Head, the hibiscus in the hedges, the sparkling water at the bathing beaches, the supper parties on the sands, the sunsets over the ocean, the warm breezes fragrant with flowers, the streets a-color with the costumes of many races, the gayety and laughter of the natives, the tinkle of the guitars in the moonlight, the bustle of the wharves and the business places, the fleets of fishing boats and their Japanese crews, the wind howling at the Pali, the royal palms along the avenues, the Chinese merchants, the big houses picturesquely sitting among their trees and flowers, the forests of ferns, the vast fields of sugar cane, the pineapples growing to a perfection reached nowhere else on earth, the warships in the harbor, the hill drives and the drives along the [34] shores, the great mountains, the native villages, the many-colored fishes, the brilliance of the water and the superbrilliance of the sun, the prodigous feasts at the country houses, the broad verandas on the moonlight nights, the unending hospitality of the peopleand best of all, the American flag flying over every inch of it. I talked with a woman who got off a ship five years ago, having two days to wait and thinking to get her laundry done. She is there yet, not because the laundry isn't finished but because she wants to stay. I was told of a man who came for a few weeks and has remained for twenty years; and there are many others who have capitulated to the charm of it, and there will be many more. I was there about a month this time. If I had stayed two months, I probably would be there yet. Envoi: It is the custom, when writing pieces, poems, stories, novels or what not about Hawaii, to sprinkle these literary productions generously with words from the Hawaiian language, thus giving local color and showing a first-hand familiarity with the islands. I have just observed that I have been recreant to this writing usage, and have used no Hawaiian words in this piece, or scarcely any. Therefore, in order to keep myself in good standing with the craft, I herewith relate, in the orthodox manner, an incident that came under my observation in Honolulu, which not only presents all the Hawaiian words used by our leading local-color artists but presents them all in a bunch, so the reader can delight in them without being distracted by the text from their liquid softness, as they say in the islands: One languorous afternoon in Honolulu two haole [35] were seated on a wide lanai. No pilikia bothered them. Everything was maikai. A kamaaina approached and greeted them Hawaiian fashion: "Pehea," he said. "Pehea oe," came the reply, for the haole were students of this musical tongue. "What are you malihini doing?" "Eating poi." "Wikiwiki," urged the kamaaina. "A wahine desires to see you. She will be huhu if you do not hear her meles. She admires you. Mai." The haole laughed. "Quit your hoomalimali," said one of them. "Kulikuli," retorted the kamaaina. "My kamailio is true. You think you are akamai, but your attitude is not maikai. Mai." "Mahope," was the answer. "Not until our poi is pau, and we rest a while on the hikiee." The kamaaina started to go upon the lanai. "Kapu," said one of the haole. "This is kona weather. It is pleasant maanei. What you ask would be hana." "Then your answer is aole?" "Ae." "Mai. 1 entreat you. Your kamailio is like that of a keiki. There will be a luau and it will be cool, for the place is mauka and not makai. There will be a hula and many fine leis will be hung around your necks. The wahine sends you aloha. Mai." "Aole. Give the wahine likepu-aloha from us. It is too much pilikia to go malaila. We shall stay maanei and hiamoe. Aloha oe." "Aloha oe," said the kamaaina mournfully, as he began to hele wawae to his hale. His mission was pau. [36] ..~~;: ~.~SLr ~~i~ . ~ ~: ~i. t; " ~. , q4F: ~:t: ~; Y' i. ''' ~~! I~: :~~;~ ~~ '~'~i: 2~; J. ~ -r4.i; ~;;::~~ ;Izt~ ~;,: ~~.;I'.~c,:.z;r. 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