here is plenty of evidence that either the King himself, in order to
make his people as much like ours as possible, or his foreign
assistants, embellished them with sentimental details. To take only
two significant points: it sounds very sentimental to be told that the
girl Ua, after Kaaialii had jumped into the vortex "wailed upon the
winds a requiem of love and grief," but a native Hawaiian has no more
notion of the word requiem than he has of a syllogism. Then again, the
story is full of expressions like this: "His _heart beat with joy_,
for he thought she was Kaala;" or "He asked her for a smile and she
_gave him her heart_." Such phrases mislead not only the general
reader but careless anthropologists into the belief that the lower
races feel and express their love just as we do. As a matter of fact,
Polynesians do not attribute feelings to the heart. Ellis (II., 311),
could not even make them understand what he was talking about when he
tried to explain to them our ideas regarding the heart as a seat of
moral feeling. The fact that our usage in this respect is a mere
convention, not based on physiological facts, makes it all the more
reprehensible to falsify psychology by adorning aboriginal tales with
the borrowed plumes and phrases of civilization.

VAGARIES OF HAWAIIAN FONDNESS

It is quite possible that the events related in the cave-story did
occur; but a Hawaiian, untouched by missionary influences, would have
told them very differently. It is very much more likely, however, that
if a Hawaiian had found himself in the predicament of Kaaialii, he
would have sympathized with the king's contemptuous speech: "What!
would you throw your life away for a girl? There are others as fair.
Here is Ua; she shall be your wife." This would have been much more in
accordance with what observers have told us of Hawaiian
"heart-affairs." "The marriage tie is loose," says Ellis (IV., 315),
"and the husband can dismiss his wife on any occasion." "The loves of
the Hawaiians are usually ephemeral," says "Haeole," the author of
_Sandwich Island Notes_ (267). The widow seldom or never plants a
solitary flower over the grave of her lord. She may once visit the
mound that marks the repose of his ashes, but never again, unless by
accident. It not unfrequently happens that a second husband is
selected while the remains of the first are being conveyed to his
"long home." Hawaiian women seem more attached to pigs and puppies
than to