Mango Tree and Its
Fruit.

My first impressions of Honolulu were disappointing. I had been, in my
childhood, a fascinated peruser of Mark Twain's "Roughing It," and his
picture of Honolulu--or rather my picture formed from his description
of it--demanded something novel in foliage and architecture, and
a great acreage of tropical vegetation. What we really found was
a modern American city with straight streets, close-clipped lawns,
and frame houses of various styles of architecture leaning chiefly
to the gingerbread, and with a business centre very much like that
of a Western town. Only after three or four days did the charm and
individuality of Honolulu make themselves felt.

To leave the dock, we had to pass through the fish market, which looked
like any other fish market, but seemed to smell worse. When we looked
at the fish, however, we almost forgot the odors, for they were as many
tinted as a rainbow. Coral red, silver, blue, blue shot with purple,
they seemed to tell of sun-kissed haunts under wind-ruffled surfaces
or of dusky caves within the underworld of branching coral. It is
hard to be sentimental about fish, but for the space of two minutes
and a half we quite mooned over the beauty fish of Honolulu.

Leaving the market, we came upon a _ley_ woman who wanted to throw
a heavy wreath of scented flowers about the neck of each of us at a
consideration of twenty cents per capita. She was a fat old woman who
used many alluring gestures and grinned coquettishly; but we were
adamant to her pleadings, and seeing a street car jingling toward
us--one of the bobtailed mule variety--we left her to try her wiles on
a fresh group from our boat, and hailed the street car. As we entered,
one passenger remarked audibly to another, "I see another transport
is in," which speech lowered my spirits fifty degrees. I hate to be
so obvious.

Under that nightmare of threatened departure we went flying
from place to place. In the first store which we entered we were
treated to _poi_--a dish always offered to the stranger as a mark
of hospitality--and partook of it in the national manner; that is,
we stuck our forefingers in the _poi_, and each then sucked her
own digit. _Poi_ is made from taro root, and tastes mouldy. It is
exceedingly nasty--nobody would want two dips.

The stores were just like those of the United States, and the
only commercial novelties which we discovered were chains made of
exquisitely tinted shells, w