We remained in the hospital three days. We did not die. Unfortunately for the purchasers of this work and our friend of the model cemetery, we would not die in Spring time. We were discharged on account of the crowded state of the institution. Visitors were beginning to discover that free board might be obtained, by stratagem, at the hospital, and the result was that a large proportion of our foreign guests found this climate very unhealthy. The doctors were cutting, dosing, and blistering, to their hearts’ content.
We re-entered the grounds with the intention of resuming our inspection where we had discontinued it, but we were subjected to a severe nervous shock the very morning of our reappearance.
The bones of two waiters from one of the restaurants, had been discovered in the bath-room of the Sandwich Island Commissioners, picked clean.HOKEE POKEE
WINKEE FUM. The gentlemen of the legation had entrapped these unsuspecting servitors, plunged them into hot water, boiled them red as lobsters, and then made a little feast of them, a reminder of their national banquets. After feeding upon the poor unfortunates, they strewed their bones about the apartment without the slightest regard for neatness or decency. Grief-stricken relatives recognized the remains by two false teeth and a glass eye which had not been consumed, and two weeping widows gathered up the bones, while five sobbing orphans scrubbed the floor clean. Our government immediately informed the court at Hawaii of this indiscretion on the part of its representatives, hinting that any repetition in the same quarter would be considered a gross breach of international etiquette.
This incident so affected us that we at once applied for readmission to the hospital. It was refused us, and we were obliged to lay off for two days at our boarding house. When we started out again we proceeded at once to
Agricultural Hall.
Our early progenitors having been tillers of the soil, the agricultural display brought to mind the days of our youth and “the old tabby cat that we threw in the well.” The turnips reminded us of the warm pressure of a parent’s hand; the early apples caused our thoughts to wander to the big peppermint bottle in the kitchen cupboard; in looking upon the luscious ox-heart cherries, we could imagine the bark of our neighbor’s dog; the parsnips brought to mind the face of our ancient school-mistress, the beets recalled to us her blessed ratan, and the sight of the onions finished up things by bringing tears to our eyes.
In addition to productions of the soil, this department contained much of the field machinery for which America is so justly famous—agricultural implements, from an oyster knife to a haywagon; farm stock, from a potato bug to a prize ox; kitchen garden preparations, from a rhubarb pie to a paregoric dumpling.
DOING THE
TROPICS.The building was divided into tropics. At one end the tropic of Cancer, named in honor of an American disease; at the other, the tropic of Capricorn, a cereal indigenous to our soil. The other seven tropics were sprinkled between, at regular intervals. The live stock exhibit, belonging to this portion of the Exposition, was most interesting. Little piggy-wiggies with their tails neatly tied in red, white, and blue ribbon; representatives of turkey and shanghai amicably sharing the same Indian meal; horses eating out of silver plated fodder boxes; colts chewing at rosewood hitching posts; animated mutton chops and undevilled kidneys calculated to make an epicure’s mouth water; goats, cows, calves, heifers, and most rare of all, real, genuine, spring chickens, the very sort which the poet has so touchingly described in his sweet lines
“You may fricassee, roast them, or stew, as you will,
But the scent of the egg shell will cling round them still.”
There was also connected with this department an aviary, containing specimens of agricultural birds, from a bee to an ostrich.