The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1908-07-11
SPINNING THREAD
Of FRIENDSHIP
Cruise of Yacht Hawaii viii
Mean More Than a Cup
Contest.

Aboard Yacht Hawaii. San Pedro
Harbor, July 3rd, 1908, 7:45 a. m.
Always when something very good
comes to man in the ordinary grind
of every day life, though he recognize
a benefeent crisis, yet it is the small
thing that he will notice. And so it
rs with me. l am sitting in the main
cabin of the yacht Hawaii and L am
going to sail on her in the race. Fun
nily enough the only thing | can think
about is that 1 have to write with
pencil instead of using q typewriter. L
have sharpened the point and spread
the paper before me and yet all | can
do is sit here like landlubber and
wonder where / am going to begin.
The moon is not quite full but it Is
half way on its nightly course and
sheds enough light to cast delicious
glamor over everything. Everybody is
ashore and [ am alone save for the
watch on deck and the moonbeams that
filter through the skylght. This makes
me think of Mr. Wilkinson s delightful
little poem about the Man in the Moon
and 1 repeat to myself:
For I've heard from the man in the
moon
And he is on our side.
Say, with him in we re bound to win
For he controls the tide.
You well may bet the cup we III get,
Wen beat the Lurlne soon
And win pile? Well / should smile;
For We heard from the man in the
moon.
This is the chorus of a song that a
friend of Captain Harris sent to him
in a letter and the idea has appealed
to me as strongly as the haunting jingle
of the thing. Everybody who goes to
sea learns something of the poetry of
life and just a few learn how to put
it into words.
| cannot help it, but it is the poetry
that appeals to me while | am trying
to write. l sit back and think and
dream. While | sit here l think of that
reel abaft the cockpit. On that reel is
wound two thousand miles of silken
thread. One end is made fast to shore
and the other end viii be made fast
al Honolulu when the Hawaii arrives
1t is the silken thread of friendship,
spun by the black haired dwarf that
guards the golden key. When the
dwarf hears the signal he comes down
from the mountain with the kew and
opens the golden lock But he does it
only for brave men and those who know
the ritual of the sillen thread.
The may say ''Oh its only a yacht
race, but it IS something very much
more than that. Two years ago it was
yacht race, but this time it is much
nary yacht race. 1t is the laying of
the sllken thread from San Pedro to
Honolulu. When man lives in the
places that We're picked out, before the
Creation, TO be the gardens on God q
Earth and, when he hears of the peo-
pie on such another part of the globe
separated by two thousand miles of
sea, anxious to join hands and he
friends, then it is that this same man
if he have red blood in his veins. re-
spends TO the call and works with brain
or hand to bridge the ocean so that
hands may meet. We have such men
here and hands are meeting now.
The glamor of the moonlight is still |
over everything outside but | have to
go to work and write facts. so I turn
up the lamp and take a fresh piece of
copy paper.
The Transpacific yacht race was 60
ing to fall through Times were hard
and nobody had any money. The South
Coast Yacht Club was glad enough to /
see the members pay their bills and /
the officers Of the club thought it would .
be wise to call the race off. They had .
no idea of what the people of the Ha-
wahan Islands had been doing. The /
hrSt man to realize this was news,
paper man. His name is Philip Wilson
ana he works for the Examiner. His
business IS to see that no celebrities
stop at local hotels without giving MP
good stories. Incidentally he supplies
the editorial staff with good ideas. He
heard about the yacht race. he heard
ABOUT the way the Islanders had built