The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1906-03-22

| But Stoddard was not out all day
Yesterday. The author of the ''South
Sea Idyls'' was in, in sense, and he
| consented to talk to me of the Ha-
| waiian Islands-of the bread-fruited
suburbs of Papeete, appealing to the
softer senses of the poet; of the vo-
| luptuous Tahitian, and of the respon-
/ sive echoes in American hearts to the
! ducet Requirements of the South Sea
! siren.
| And those facetious lines, quoted at
| the head of this article, were penned
| by poor health broken Stevenson and
| one day long ago dropped under the
| door of Charles Warren Stoddard s
| room. For the downcast man (physi-
caIlyl was bubbhng over with i'm
promptus and he himself took them to
| the ''most San Franciscoey part of San
Francisco and laid them there at the
poet s door. But here-and the jump
| is self-evident-the result of these lit
tie quips and conferences was 1.-The
Wrecker,' and the trip of Stevenson
to the South Sea islands.
s. said to myself, - Stoddard writes
in his Exits and Entrances prose
epic, .'apart from the inevitable ami
mate attractions, the consummate
splendor of vast palm plantations, the
lisp of the reef-zoned, effeminate sea,
the almost overwhelming fragrance of
indolent gales, heavy with the perfume
of citron and lime-these will surely
paint his skies a richer color and in
flame the blood of his heroes, if not
that of his heroines.
But these are the written words of
the author of '.South Sea Idyls.' They
are commensurate, they are ample,
they are sufficing in that they take
you into an enchanted land where for
generations hence voices as soft as the
sibilant waters that flow by Vailima,
and as sad as the sob OF the sea, will
chant in the radiant starlight the lofty
exploits of Tusitala, the Teller of
Tales, whose dust is gathered upon the
crown of Vaea, where he had longed to
-lie. The pages of landscape and sea-
scape, that are enough to wiring the
heart of .homesick lover of the South
Seas, are all that is left to us of
Stevenson, but that writer, in whom
there is not the faintest suspicion of
Scotch mist lowering between him
and reality, is still with us telling of
the halcyon days when he nestled in
the bosom of that tropical equatorial
land and In poetic mosiacs. that to the
discredit of readers are not universally
known, he wrapped its glories.
Charles Warren Stoddard. than whom
no living writer has done more to i'm
mortalize the languid southern land,
sat yesterday in his living room; not a
chamber that you would associate with
a poet existence, it was prosy but
comfortable. Before him Law a large
writing pad on a number of pages of
which were scrawled in that hideous,
inartistic scrawl of his, some copy. The
room was spacious On his little writ
ing table nestled in an alcove between
three windows were few books, one
of which was the Bible. What was
there to attract the poet of the South
Seas, that land of Incidence and magic.
to these comfortable but prosaic sur
roundings, or was it Paul Clitheroe
again seeking refuge in a picturesque
monastry, he who camped among can
nibals, basked in the favor of Cardinal
Princes, starved in Bohemia, or with
the holy missionaries in far off places.
Toasted with Eastern potentates or dis
ported with thespian stars or coryphees,
all of which We're alike to him. as far
as the eternal fitness of things are con-
cerned. Yes, Stoddard has told us there
was a natural tendency to method in
some mystical muttering music that
made 1t easy for him to drop into rut
And with him we were almost prone to
say, perhaps after all he could get
used to his new life and live it OUT
What was there to attract, to con-
sole, to satiate the poet?
You look out in the afternoon and
the symptom of approaching rain ex-
pressed in the schoolboy song of long
ago is recalled "the distant hills are
loking nigh taking you within appar-
emily stones throw of the coast range,
and up there to the east is Lick OBJ
servatory, though that does not ap-
peal to the poets monumental in
stincts. But, cit is lovely when the
sun rises in the morning. he says.
"The windows in the houses up there
| around Mt. Hamilton are Illuminated
as if by an are light. I see them from
you get little pictures of nature s
handlwork that console you to look
| at
1t was easv to induce the author to
| talk on the Hawaiian islands.
THE AIR PERFECTLY GLORIOUS.
eff one of the teachers of this
| county, he said, ''should want to go
| to the Hawaiian islands she should AXE
one of the big ships for China that
| touch there. After or about the second
| days trip you get into that beautiful
air You don t see much air, but there
you never fail to feel it. It becomes
| perfectly glorious. You are about six
days at sea. Perhaps they make il some
times less than that and you get up tc
| these islands which is like a bit OF
landscape rdening-something mar
velous for color. 1t is a climate in
which it rains whenever it feels like it