The newspapers of Honolulu, this Farthest West of his own country, have shown toward him no influence of the unkindness of his natal State, but have been all that is hospitable, and this in face of the rebuff put upon their city when we sailed calmly by to the suburbs. From various sources again we hear of the welcomes that were waiting along the wharves, the garlands that were woven for our necks.
It must be forgiven that I jump from theme to theme in more or less distracted manner; for if the way of my life is one of swift adjustments, so must be the honest way of my chronicle. And so, from Presidents, and reporters, wolf-dogs, and politics, lynxes, and ethics, and histories of author-husbands, I shift to fripperies, and gala gardens, and Polynesian princes.
My party-gown hangs on a line across a corner of the big room, faultlessly pressed by the æsthetic Tochigi, with yards of Spanish lace, souvenir of Santiago de Cuba, about the shoulders, arranged with unerring taste by fair Gretchen. It is always a pleasure to hear her benevolent “How are you people?” and Albert’s cheery “Zing!” at the red gate. Often he and the Madonna stroll over in the dusk, in their hands slender red-glowing punks to ward off mosquitoes—the “undesirable immigrants” that have infested Hawaii’s balmy nights these eighty years, ever since the ship Wellington, last from San Bias, Mexico, unwittingly discharged them in her otherwise empty water barrels at Lahaina, on Maui. It was a sad exchange for unpolluted drinking water. Fortunately the days are free of the pests; but woe to the malihini who kens not deftly how to tuck his bobinet under the edges of his mattress.
The enchantment of our lovely acre and the novel way of living, it would seem, are being challenged by the varying temptations of the Capital. To-night we attend the reception, and to-morrow ride to Waikiki to spend a few days on the Beach.
Pearl Harbor, May 30.
We took the five o’clock train to Honolulu, and drove in a funny one-horse carriage to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel for dinner. Ever since Jack’s letters to me from Hawaii three years ago, I have longed to see this noted tropic hostelry with its white tiers of balconies and its Hawaiian orchestra, and the red and green lights which its foreign visitors execrate and adore. Last evening, however, the hotel was quiet—no music, no colored lights, and few guests. But the gardens were there, and the fairy balconies, on the lowest of which we dined most excellently, with an unforeseen guest. Before the “American-plan” dinner hour, we were sitting in a cool corner, when a bearded young man stepped briskly up:
“You’re Jack London, aren’t you?—My name is Ford.”
(1) Working Garb in Elysium. (2) Duke Kahanamoku, 1915.
“Oh, yes,” Jack returned, quickly on his feet. “—Alexander Hume Ford. I heard you were in Honolulu, and have wanted to see you. I’ve read lots of your stuff—and all of your dandy articles in The Century.”