The house of pride, and other tales of HawaiiLondon, Jack
General
The house of pride, and other tales of Hawaii
London, Jack
Hawaii -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, American
Never are there such departures as from the dock at Honolulu. The great
transport lay with steam up, ready to pull out. A thousand persons were
on her decks; five thousand stood on the wharf. Up and down the long
gangway passed native princes and princesses, sugar kings and the high
officials of the Territory. Beyond, in long lines, kept in order by the
native police, were the carriages and motor-cars of the Honolulu
aristocracy. On the wharf the Royal Hawaiian Band played "Aloha Oe," and
when it finished, a stringed orchestra of native musicians on board the
transport took up the same sobbing strains, the native woman singer's
voice rising birdlike above the instruments and the hubbub of departure.
It was a silver reed, sounding its clear, unmistakable note in the great
diapason of farewell.
Forward, on the lower deck, the rail was lined six deep with khaki-clad
young boys, whose bronzed faces told of three years' campaigning under
the sun. But the farewell was not for them. Nor was it for the white-
clad captain on the lofty bridge, remote as the stars, gazing down upon
the tumult beneath him. Nor was the farewell for the young officers
farther aft, returning from the Philippines, nor for the white-faced,
climate-ravaged women by their sides. Just aft the gangway, on the
promenade deck, stood a score of United States Senators with their wives
and daughters--the Senatorial junketing party that for a month had been
dined and wined, surfeited with statistics and dragged up volcanic hill
and down lava dale to behold the glories and resources of Hawaii. It was
for the junketing party that the transport had called in at Honolulu, and
it was to the junketing party that Honolulu was saying good-bye.
The Senators were garlanded and bedecked with flowers. Senator Jeremy
Sambrooke's stout neck and portly bosom were burdened with a dozen
wreaths. Out of this mass of bloom and blossom projected his head and
the greater portion of his freshly sunburned and perspiring face. He
thought the flowers an abomination, and as he looked out over the
multitude on the wharf it was with a statistical eye that saw none of the
beauty, but that peered into the labour power, the factories, the
railroads, and the plantations that lay back of the multitude and which
the multitude expressed. He saw resources and thought development, and
he was too busy with dreams of material achievement and empire to notice
his daughter at his side, talking with a young fellow in a natty summer
suit and straw hat, whose eager eyes seemed only for her and never left
her face. Had Senator Jeremy had eyes for his daughter, he would have
seen that, in place of the young girl of fifteen he had brought to Hawaii
a short month before, he was now taking away with him a woman.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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