Again referring to that beloved scrap heap, the Snark, there’s a comedian in our own small tragedy, although he doesn’t know it. His sweet and liquid name is Schwank, assumably Teutonic, and, with hands eloquent of by-gone belaying pins, “every finger a fishhook, every hair a rope yarn,” he tinkers about the boat in the capacity of carpenter. With his large family, he lives on the other side of the peninsula, and bids fair to be a great diversion to us all. Belike he has of old been a sad swashbuckler for he hints at dark deeds on the high seas, of castaways and stowaways, of smuggled opium and other forbidden treasure; and he gloats over memories of gleaming handfuls of pearls exchanged for handfuls of sugar in the goodly yesteryears. Why did he not make it pailfuls of pearls while he was on the subject? In my own dreams of pearl-gathering in the Paumotus and Torres Straits far to the southwest, I never allow myself to think in less measure than a lapful. But pondering upon this theatrical old pirate’s vaunted exchange, I cannot help wishing I had been a sugar planter, for I care more for pearls than for sugar.
Late this afternoon we took out the horses for a few red miles over the roads of Honolulu Plantation. The rich, rolling country recalled rides in Iowa, its high green cane, over our heads, rustling and waving like corn of the Middle West. And everywhere we turned were the stout and gnarly Japanese laborers, women as well as men. Female field laborers may be picturesque in some lands; but I am blest if these tiny Japanese women, with their squat, misshapen bodies, awful bandy legs, and blank, sexless faces, look well in ours. Their heads are bound in white cloth, while atop, fitting as well as Happy Hooligan’s crown, sit small sun-hats of coarse straw. From under bent backs men and women alike lowered at us with their slant, inscrutable eyes. Tony, who claims a smattering of their language, tells us: “I think Americans no lika-da talk those Japanese I hear on my train and Pearl City.” And there are 56,000[[2]] of them by now in this covetable Territory.
Sunday night we went up by train to Honolulu, to fulfill a dinner engagement with Mr. and Mrs. Charles L. Rhodes. Mr. Rhodes is editor of the evening paper, The Star, and Mr. Walter Gifford Smith, editor of the Pacific Commercial Advertiser, whom Jack had met here in 1904, was also a guest. The others were Brigadier-General John H. Soper and his family. General Soper is the first officer ever honored by the Hawaiian Government—by any one of the successive Hawaiian Governments—with the rank and commission of General. He had been in charge of the police during the unsettled days of the Revolution, and later on was made Marshal of the Republic of Hawaii, in effect previous to her annexation by the United States.
Mr. and Mrs. Rhodes live in a roomy, vine-clambered cottage, set in a rosy lane tucked away behind an avenue clanking with open electric cars; such a pretty lane, a garden in itself, closed at one end, where a magnificent bougainvillea flaunts magenta banners, and a slanting coconut palm traces its deep green frondage against the sky.
This was a most pleasant glimpse into a Honolulu home, and our new friends further invited us to go with them to a reception Wednesday evening. Now, be it known that neither of us is overfond of public receptions; but this one is irresistible, for Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole and his royal wife are to receive in state, in their own home, with the Congressional party, now visiting the Islands from Washington, on the Reception Committee. Also, there is a possibility that Her Majesty, Liliuokalani, the last crowned head of the fallen monarchy, may be there. In these territorial times of Hawaii, such a gathering may not occur again, and it is none too early for us to grasp a chance to glimpse something of what remains of the incomparably romantic monarchy.
May 29.
Heigh-O, palm-trees and grasses! This is a lovely world altogether, and we are most glad to be in it. But it has its small drawbacks, say when the honored Chief Executive of one’s own United States of America makes an error quite out of keeping with his august superiority. This placid gray-and-gold morning, arriving by first train from town, and before we had risen from our post-breakfast feast of books at the jolly little outdoor table, an affable young man, whose unsettled fortune—or misfortune—it is to be a newspaper reporter, invaded our vernal privacy. In his hand no scrip he bore, but a copy of Everybody’s Magazine, portly with advertising matter, his finger inserted at an article by Theodore Roosevelt on the subject of “nature-fakers.” In this more or less just diatribe, poor Jack London is haled forth and flayed before a deceived reading public as one of several pernicious writers who should be restrained from misleading the adolescent of America with incorrect representation of animal life and psychology. An incident in Jack’s “White Fang,” published last fall, companion novel to “The Call of the Wild,” is selected for damning evidence of the author’s infidelity to nature. Our Teddy, oracle and idol of adventurous youth, declares with characteristic emphasis that no lynx could whip a wolf-dog as Jack’s lynx whipped Kiche, the wolf-dog. But the joke is on the President this time, as any one can see who will take the trouble to look up the description in “White Fang.” And lest you have no copy convenient, let me explain that Jack never said the lynx whipped the wolf-dog. Quite to the contrary—
“Why, look here,” he laughed, running his eye rapidly down the magazine column, “he says that the lynx in my story killed the wolf-dog. It did nothing of the kind. That doesn’t show that Mr. Roosevelt is as careful an observer as Everybody’s would have us believe. My story is about the wolf-dog killing the lynx—and eating it!”
“I hope he’ll get it straight,” he mused after the departing form of the reporter with a “good story.” “I can see myself writing an answer to Mr. Roosevelt later on, in some magazine.”
Jack’s hope that his response to the charge of “nature-faking” would be honestly reported, was a reflex to the relentless treatment he has suffered from the press of the Pacific Coast. This is undoubtedly due to the menace of his socialistic utterances; but what a distorted civilization it is that makes a man who has unaided fought his way up from nether levels of circumstance, pay so bitterly for his stark humanitarian politics.