ls to Christians, and
gives picturesque bits of the life and scenery.

Hawaii was then dominated chiefly by French and English; though the
American interests were by no means small.

Extract from letter No. 4:

Cap. Fitch said "There's the king. That's him in the buggy. I know him
as far as I can see him."

I had never seen a king, and I naturally took out a note-book and put
him down: "Tall, slender, dark, full-bearded; green frock-coat, with
lapels and collar bordered with gold band an inch wide; plug hat, broad
gold band around it; royal costume looks too much like livery; this man
is not as fleshy as I thought he was."

I had just got these notes when Cap. Fitch discovered that he'd got hold
of the wrong king, or rather, that he'd got hold of the king's driver,
or a carriage driver of one of the nobility. The king wasn't present at
all. It was a great disappointment to me. I heard afterwards that the
comfortable, easy-going king, Kamehameha V., had been seen sitting on
a barrel on the wharf, the day before, fishing. But there was no
consolation in that. That did not restore me my lost king.

This has something of the flavor of the man we were to know later;
the quaint, gentle resignation to disappointment which is one of the
finest touches in his humor.

Further on he says: "I had not shaved since I left San Francisco.
As soon as I got ashore I hunted up a striped pole, and shortly
found one. I always had a yearning to be a king. This may never
be, I suppose, but, at any rate, it will always be a satisfaction to
me to know that, if I am not a king, I am the next thing to it.
I have been shaved by the king's barber."

Honolulu was a place of cats. He saw cats of every shade and
variety. He says: "I saw cats--tomcats, Mary-Ann cats, bobtailed
cats, blind cats, one-eyed cats, wall-eyed cats, cross-eyed cats,
gray cats, black cats, white cats, yellow cats, striped cats,
spotted cats, tame cats, wild cats, singed cats, individual cats,
groups of cats, platoons of cats, companies of cats, armies of cats,
multitudes of cats, millions of cats, and all of them sleek, fat,
and lazy, and sound asleep." Which illustrates another
characteristic of the humor we were to know later--the humor of
grotesque exaggeration, in which he was always strong.

He found the islands during his periods of ina