The figures of the men are more finely proportioned, more statuesque, more worthy of preservation in marble or bronze than those of the women. Only at rare intervals does one find among this branch of the Polynesian race a female shape which from crown to sole will satisfy the canons of proportion—which one carries in the eye. That is not to say, however, that the artistic eye will not often meet a shape that appeals to the sense of grace and beauty. The springtime of Hawaiian womanly beauty hastes away too soon. Would it were possible to stay that fleeting period which ushers in full womanhood! One finds himself asking the question to what extent the responsibility for this overthickness of leg and ankle—exaggerated in appearance, no doubt, by the ruffled anklets often worn—this pronounced tendency to the growth of that degenerate weed, fat, is to be explained by the standard of beauty which held sway in Hawaii’s courts and for many ages acted as a principle of selection in the physical molding of the Hawaiian female. The prevailing type of physique among the Hawaiians, even more marked in the women than in the men, is the short and thick, as opposed to the graceful and slender. One does occasionally find delicacy of modeling in the young and immature; but with adolescence fatness too often comes to blur the outline. The hoopa’a, who act as instrumentalists, very naturally maintain a position between sitting and kneeling, the better [Page 58] to enable them to handle that strangely effective drumlike instrument, the _ipu_, the one musical instrument used as an accompaniment in this hula. The ipu is made from the bodies of two larger pear-shaped calabashes of unequal sizes, which are joined together at their smaller ends in such a manner as to resemble a figure-of-eight. An opening is left at the top of the smaller calabash to increase the resonance. In moments of calm the musicians allow the body to rest upon the heels; as the action warms they lift themselves to such height as the bended knee will permit.