there!

It was only because I knew that we were to stop longer on the way
back that I was willing to leave Honolulu at all. So we sailed on,
toward Australia. And now I knew that my boy was about setting out on
his great voyage around the world. Day by day I would get out the map,
and try to prick the spot where he'd be.

And I'd think: "Aye! When I'm here John'll be there! Will he be
nearer to me than now?"

Thinking of the braw laddie, setting out, so proud and happy, made me
think of my ain young days. My father couldna' give me such a chance
as my boy was to have. I'd worked in the mines before I was John's
age. There'd been no Cambridge for me--no trip around the world as a
part of my education. And I thanked God that he was letting me do so
much for my boy.

Aye, and he deserved it, did John! He'd done well at Cambridge; he
had taken honors there. And soon he was to go up to London to read
for the Bar. He was to be a barrister, in wig and gown, my son, John!

It was of him, and of the meeting we were all to have in Australia,
that I thought, more than anything else, in the long, long days upon
the sea. We sailed on from Honolulu until we came to Paga-Paga. So it
is spelled, but all the natives call it Panga-Panga.

Here I saw more and yet more of the strange and wonderful things I
had thought upon so long back, in Dunoon. Here I saw mankind, for the
first time, in a natural state. I saw men who wore only the figleaf
of old Father Adam, and a people who lived from day to day, and whom
the kindly earth sustained.

They lived entirely from vegetables and from clear crystal streams
and upon marvelous fish from the sea. Ah, how I longed to stay in
Paga-Paga and be a natural man. But I must go on. Work called me back
to civilization and sorrow-fully I heeded its call and waved good-by
to the natural folk of Paga-Paga!

It was before I came to Paga-Paga that I wrote a little verse
inspired by Honolulu. Perhaps, if I had gone first to Paga-Paga--
don't forget to put in the n and call it Panga-Panga when you say it
to yourself!--I might have written it of that happy island of the
natural folk. But I did not, so here is the verse:

I love you, Honolulu, Honolulu I love you!
You are the Queen of the Sea!
Your valleys and mountains
Your palais and fountains
Forever and ever will be dear to me!

I wedded a simple melody to those simple, heart-felt lines, and since
then I have sung the so