The mill, with its enormous processes, I shall not attempt to describe further than to assure that it is a place of breathless interest and wonder. One sees and tastes the sugar in its successive phases of manufacture, up to the point where it is shipped to the States for the last stage of refining.
And more absorbing than these technicalities of the Plantation were the human races represented among the workers who live and labor, are born, married, and die within its confines. Through a bewilder of foreign villages we wandered on foot—Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, Norwegian, Spanish, Swedish, Korean, Porto Rican; even the Russians were here but lately. One cannot fail to note the scarcity of Hawaiian laborers—and rejoice in it, for they are proud and free creatures, and it would seem pity to bind them on their own soil. On the other hand, there is no gainsaying that they are capable toilers when they will. Indeed, it is said that they accomplish twice the work that a Japanese is willing to do in a day; but following pay day the Hawaiian is likely not to appear again until all his money is gloriously squandered. He is strong and trustworthy, and makes an excellent overseer, or luna, as well as teacher; for he is not merely imitative, but intelligent in applying what he has learned.
We were led into schools and kindergartens maintained for the scores of children, and presided over for the most part by white women. In one room there was a Japanese-Hawaiian teacher—a sweet and maidenly young thing, her Nipponese strain lending an elusive delicacy to the round warm native features. In faultless English she explained the duties of her schoolroom, showing great pride in a sewing class then in session, and pointing through the window to where the boys of her class could be seen putting the yard to rights.
I thought we could never leave the kindergartens, with their engaging babies of endless colors and variety of lineaments, pure types and crossbred. Most beautiful of all were the Portuguese, with only one drawback to their childish charm—the grave maturity of their faces. Bella, however, two-years-tiny, golden-eyed and gold-tawny of skin, forgot her temperamental soberness and coquetted shamelessly from an absurd chair in the circle on the bright floor, when she should have been attending to Teacher. But even Bella came to grief. Like some other coquettes she was winningly familiar at a distance; but when I tried to cultivate a closer acquaintance with the young pomegranate blossom, and take a picture of her loveliness, she fell victim to a panic of embarrassment and terror that ended in violent weeping in Teacher’s lap.
Homeward bound, it seemed as if we had been transported to and from a foreign land for the day, though what land was the problem, in view of the manifold types we had walked among.
In the soft black evening, some of our neighbors drifted across the yielding turf beneath the ancient trees, the women taking form in the velvet dark like tall spirit vestals trailing dim draperies and swirling incense. We lay in the cool grass, the lighted ends of our scented punks flitting and darting like fireflies, and listened to Peer Gynt from the Victor indoors, and Mascagni’s orchestral paradises of sound, Patti’s rippling treble, and Emma Eames’s clear fluting of “Still as the Night,” floating upward to the sighing obligato of a rising wind from across the rustling reef-waters.
Sweet land of palms and peace, love and song—and yet, those who knew her in days gone by would walk sadly now in remembered haunts. Old faces are missing, and faces resembling them are few. The Hawaii of yesterday passes, and it makes even the stranger pensive to see the changing. To one who views her from the height of his heart, a bright commercial future is cold compensation for the irreplaceable loss of the old Hawaii.
Pearl Lochs, June 11.
A bit of real Hawaii was ours last night—Hawaii as she is, with more than a trace of what she has been. It came about through an invitation from one of our neighbors, who owns the cemetery near Pearl City, to accompany his wife and himself to a native luau (loo-ah-oo—quickly, loo-ow), meaning feast. And a luau becomes a hookupu when the guests bring the food. We four were the only white guests, for in these latter days the natives are chary of including foreigners in their more intimate entertainments. But for our friend’s confidential and sympathetic relation toward them, nothing would have induced them to consent to our intrusion.
The feast was a sort of “benefit,” given at the christening of the baby of one “Willie,” this being a familiar custom among the people. Mr. Willie and his pretty, giggly wife were in a small frenzy of hospitality and diffidence at receiving a man who writes books, and ran out to the gate calling “Come in! Come in! Come in!” in rapid sweet staccato.