The Longworths were scheduled to serve on the committee receiving Secretary Strauss and his party from Washington; and though Jack and I first begged off from attending the formal occasion, when we learned it was to be in the old throne room of the Palace, we decided to go. Mr. Atkinson whirled us away to the Executive Building, standing in its illuminated gardens, and soon we were passing along the dignified line of those receiving, out of which Mrs. Longworth, who is refreshingly unbound by convention, temporarily strayed to bombard Jack with a new argument in favor of the wolf-dog she had essayed to champion against his imaginary bull-pup.
But what snared our fancy on this occasion was not the gathering of American statesmen and their bejeweled ladies, nor the impressive meeting between Secretary Strauss from Washington and Governor Carter of Hawaii. Our eyes were most often with the throng of high-caste Hawaiians in the lofty hall, more especially the queenly women, gowned in their distinguishing and distinguished white holokus, standing proud-bosomed, gazing with their beautiful eyes of brown at the white-and-gold girl who is the daughter of their alien ruler, President Theodore Roosevelt. We wondered what memories were in their brains as they recalled other brilliant occasions when they had filed by the imposing crimson throne yonder, to bow kissing the hands of their hereditary kings, and their last queen. She, H. R. H. Liliuokalani, has resolutely declined all invitations whatsoever to this house of her royal triumph and her humiliating imprisonment, since 1895, the year of her formal renouncement of all claim to the crown, and her appeal for clemency to those who had taken part in the insurrection.
Honolulu, August 6.
A few kamaainas of Honolulu have long since discovered the climatic and scenic advantages of Tantalus, Puu Ohia, one of the high, wooded ridges behind the city, more particularly in the sultry summer months. Tantalus is ideal for suburban nests, overlooking as it does the city and Waikiki District, well-forested, with opportunity for vigorous exercise on the steep sides of Makiki and Pauoa valleys, and to their rustic eyry at the head of Makiki Valley, the Thurstons carried us by saddle.
One afternoon, while I languished with a headache, Jack returned gleefully from a tramp, bringing me some of the wild fruits and nuts of the mountain, among them water-lemons and rose-apples. The former are round balls of about two-inch diameter, with greenish-brown, crisp rind full of tart, pulpy, spicy seeds. Although quite different in flavor and color, the formation reminds one of pomegranates and guavas. But the rose-apple!—evergreen native of the West Indies, it is too good to be true, for the edible shell has a flavor precisely like the odor of attar of roses, which is my favorite perfume. Almost it makes one feel native to the soil of a strange country, to nourish the blood of life with its vegetation.
Last night, back in town, Jack, at the request of Mr. Thurston and the Research Club of which he is a member, delivered his much-bruited lecture, “Revolution.”
This paper of Jack’s, an arraignment of the capitalist class for its mismanagement of human society, was originally a partly extempore flare of the spirit delivered in 1905 before an audience of nearly five thousand at the University of California, where he himself had studied during part of a Freshman year.
Hawaii knows little of socialism, for she lacks the problems that confront the United States and other great countries. Sugar is her backbone, labor is almost entirely imported, and handled in a patriarchal way that makes for comparative contentment, especially in so rigorless a climate. Feudal Hawaii is; but the masters are benevolent.
And Jack, who stepped before the Research Club with the blue fire of challenge in his eyes, his spirited head well back, and a clarion in his voice, found these gentlemen to be their own vindication of the name they had chosen for their Club. For with open minds they hearkened to this passionate youngster, insolent with righteous certitude of his solution of the wrongs of the groaning old earth; and presently, sensing unexpected atmosphere of intelligent and courteous attention, Jack muted his trumpets.
Discussion lasted into the small hours, and Lorrin Thurston, no mean antagonist with his lightning-flash arguments, who laid every possible gin and pitfall for Jack’s undoing, beamed upon the rather startling guest he had introduced among his tranquil fellows, and whispered to me: