The next day found each of us enrolled on the teaching staff of two different schools. We became school teachers! There is something rather distasteful about a man teaching in the grammar grades. It is too ladylike. I would rather be caught operating an electric runabout. But when one realises that his last meal is not far away, any occupation is acceptable, and school teaching proved to be one of the most attractive vocations which we pursued during the trip.
Richardson affiliated himself with Mills Institute, a school under the control of the Hawaiian Board of the Congregational Church Missionary organisation. The total enrolment of this institution was about two hundred students, three-fourths of whom were Chinese and the rest Japanese and Koreans. It graduated pupils of high school standing and it was in the upper division that Richardson was to work. He was instructor in algebra, geometry, Latin and English at sixty dollars a month and board. His work consisted of the routine duties of any ordinary teacher and, except that the school was quarantined for three weeks on account of diphtheria, nothing eventful occurred during his connection with the place.
On the beach at Waikiki
I assumed the duties of teacher of the fourth and fifth grades in Iolani School, a parochial institution connected with Saint Andrew's Cathedral, at the mere pittance of thirty dollars a month and board. Hawaiian schools are in many respects similar to those on the mainland and differ chiefly in the fact that the personnel of the pupils is much more cosmopolitan. In these two grades there were about sixty boys made up of Hawaiians, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Portuguese and but two Americans. At the end of two months under my instruction one of the American boys ran away and the other poor chap went insane—a tough commentary on the pedagogic ability of their teacher.
One of the masterpieces of literature that came to my attention is too good to let fade into obscurity. It is a letter from a number of Chinese and Japanese pupils asking me for their report cards. It follows:
"Dear Mr. A.C.B. Fletcher:
Our objection in writing this letter to you that we don't want our report cards on last examination and you promise to us that you will sent out the cards on Monday, but the cards has not yet reached us. We shall be obliged if you will sent us the report cards when you have accept this letter.
Hoping to receive the cards early,
Your disobedient pupils,
H. Ah Chau,
Instead of pupil."
Mr. Ah Chew
Mr. Ah Soy
Mr. Jay Yet
Mr. Jock Chay
Mr. T. Murakami
Mr. Lo Lee
No one could resist this touching plea, so I spent one whole night correcting papers and had the report cards ready to deliver the following day.
"The loveliest fleet of islands that lie anchored in any ocean," were the words in which Mark Twain once described the Hawaiian group, and the time we spent in the "Paradise of the Pacific" proved to be one of the most enjoyable periods of the trip.