thousand feet
into the ocean, the green embrasures where the mango, the guava, and the
lovi lovi grow, and where the hibiscus lifts red hands to the light.
I call to mind the luau where Kalakua, the King, presided over the
dispensation of stewed puppy, lifted to one's lips by brown but fair
fingers, of live shrimps, of poi and taro and balls of boiled sea-weed
stuffed with Heaven knows what; and to crown all, or to drown all, the
insinuating liquor kava, followed when the festival was done by the
sensuous but fascinating hula hula, danced by maidens of varying
loveliness. Of these Van Blaricom, the American, said, "they'd capture
Chicago in a week with that racket," and he showed Blithelygo his
calculations as to profits.

The moments that we enjoyed the most, however, were those that came when
feast and serenade were over, when Hawaii Ponoi, the National Anthem,
was sung, and we lay upon the sands and watched the long white coverlet
of foam folding towards the shore, and saw visions and dreamed dreams.
But at times we also breathed a prayer--a prayer that somebody or
something would come and carry off Van Blaricom, whose satire, born and
nurtured in Chicago, was ever turned against Hawaii and all that therein
was.

There are times when I think I had a taste of Paradise in Hawaii--but a
Paradise not without a Satanic intruder in the shape of that person from
Illinois. Nothing escaped his scorn. One day we saw from Diamond Head
three water-spouts careering to the south, a splendid procession of
the powers of the air. He straightway said to Kalakua, that "a Michigan
cyclone had more git-up-and-git about it than them three black cats with
their tails in the water." He spent hours in thinking out rudely caustic
things to repeat about this little kingdom. He said that the Government
was a Corliss-engine running a sewing machine. He used to ask the
Commander of the Forces when the Household Cavalry were going into
summer camp--they were twelve. The only thing that appeared to impress
him seriously was Molokai, the desolate island where the lepers made
their cheerless prison-home. But the reason for his gravity appeared
when he said to Blithelygo and myself: "There'd be a fortune in that
menagerie if it was anchored in Lake Michigan." On that occasion he was
answered in strong terms. It was the only time I ever heard Blithelygo
use profanity. But the American merely dusted his patent leather shoes
with a gay silk kerchief, a