The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1900-10-08
HAWAIIAN ADVERTISING.

Charles Dudley Warner. writes: For
long time it has been with me real
longing to see Hawaii, and yet the
years pass and / do not get there,
neither to Hawaii nor to Japan"
This reminds US of a story. Some
years ago Mr.. Warner syentured to ex-
press in print a longing to see Southern
California, whereupon an enterprising
hotel keeper there invited him to spend
a winter in the semi-tropics as his
guest. Nothing Ioath Warner came
and made his peace with nature among
the wild flowers and larks and close to
the ocean--and the result was a series
of magazine articles terminating in the
book Our Italy" which brought more
tourists to California than any other
had done since the pioneer descriptive
work of Charles Nordhoff; more in fact
than were drawn there by the Southern
Californian display at the Chicago Ex-
position.
Now when a great writer expresses
a longing unfulfilled to see a place, it
does not do any hurt, IL that place
wants the best kind of advertising, to
invite him there and make much of
him at no cost to his usually slender
purse. Mark Twain wrote poetry In
prose to express his longing to return
but nobody even sent him so much as
a card of hotel rates; and as for Stod-
dard, whose Idylls of the South Seas
brought romantic tourists here in
swarms perhaps nobody ever thanked
him, much less invited him to make an
other visit. Honolulu Is famous for
hospitality, yet great men of literature
go past here every few months and are
not asked to stay over q steamer. A
little while ago when David Starr Jor-
dan came to Honolulu en- route to Jap
an, he tramped the streets for lodgings
and finally got a nook in small hotel.
Robert Louis Stevenson. thanks to AL
Ian Herbert and a few others, used to
fare better: and he paid well for this
! hospitality in writing THE Wrecker"
and various pictorial essays which un-
failingly hypnotized the pilgrim and
the stranger and brought them here
post-haste.
When a great book maker writes any
thing like this about Hawaii (from
Mark Twain) send for him: mo alien
land In all the world has any deep
strong charm for me but that one; nc
OIner ldnQ COuiQ SO lOnSlNSly ana De-
seechingly haunt me, sleeping and
waking, through half lifetime, as tina,
one has done. Other things leave me
but 1t abides; other things change but
1t remains the same. For me its balmy
airs are always blowing, it's summer
seas flashing in the sun; the pulsing o.
it's surf-beat is in my ears; 1 can SCI
its garlanded crags. it's leaping cas-
cades, it's plumy-palms browsing by
the shore; it's remote SUBMITS floating
like islands above the cloud rack; 1 cal
feel the spirit of the woodland solitude
l can hear the fash of its brooks; il
my nostrils still lives the breath O
flowers that persisted twenty year
ago." There is longing in every line t,
see Hawaii once more but at the tim
Twain wrote these De Quincey-lik
phrases he was bankrupt. If some on
of standing had asked him here for
six months visit he would have prob
ably come and written enough abou
Hawaii in the meantime to turn tn
thoughts and the persons of thousand
of tourists hitherward.
And yet we spend money like waite
to put a photograph of Governor Dol
on key of rice at Par.s and to SEN
a Snowman to Omaha to urge our mer
its as if they were the goods in Zee
ord hand "cloding'' store.