Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1908-03-22

and wh1mSy assortment of foreign lands, and
never to have searched out a consulate within
which to pull the spitlock and ask the BRUSH
and petulant consul for aid in getting back
home to the Sales.--future is something for
the settled and sedate man to remember. if
not with sort of furtive pride, at least with
modest self appreciation. To have been
broke" for example, in SO drearily and be;
dingedly and unfalteringly a "show me-
country as England and to have got back
over the western ocean,-which is not the
Pacific. but the Atlantic. oh landlocked
reader-without having to cable home for
funds, even supposlng there had been any
body to cable to. without cooling the
accustomed heels in the anteroom of an Amer
lean consul's office,-one might find a bit OF
satisfaction in that, even if the return journey
involved memories of the clinging smell OF
cattle steamer westbound in ballast.
Aye, to have made that long and tempest
tossed jump from Hongkong to the God-made
land of America. without captivating in the
finding of ways and means, would be something
worth while to remember in the Smugger and
more velvety years, even if that recollection
too was pervaded with the aroma of a half
Lascar and half Chinese foc'sle!
Even to have been a South Seas beach
comber on two or three separate occasions
waiting wearsomely for ship, and the ship
anchored in the roadstead even more weari-
somely waiting for the Shippers verdict as to
whether or no he'll ship you for the cruise ID
the States, to Wales, to Germany, to any old
place in civiization,-even this thirty-th;rd
degree of the experienced broke" one need
not leave any very grisly scars of recollection
if the trapped beachcomber won his way out
of the humid sapphire seas by decent COM
bination of head and-hand adroitness and
labor All the same. distinctly and even
poignanty let it be accumulated, there's no
fun in being a beachcomber- Robert Louis
Stevenson, cruising about the South Pacific,
once tried to imagine himself for little while
to be beachcomber. He soon gave it up,
though remarking that, even hooking the
beachcombers role, he felt all over sensation
as of one burning in-well. burning in Tar
tarus, let us say.
The Terrors of Hawaii
ONCE knew man who, broke in Homo
~ lulu, was worse than broke" in that
beautiful metropolis of peerless Hawaii. Worse
than broke? 1t may sound enigmatic, but
it isn't You see, this man, in addition to
being broke in Honolulu. was in debt in
Honolulu Now, there's law in Hawaii the
essence of which is that the person who owes
money in Hawaii can't sail away from Hawaii
He's got to stay behind other of the
islands until he discharges the final penny of
his Hawaiian Indebtedness foolish law
considering many things; for, IN a lotus land
of few industries and all of them carefully alb
sorbed by few magnates and their favorites
how is the broke one to engage IN activities
that will enable him to settle his debts and to
depart regretfully from Hawaii with the plain
tive aloha music in his ears!
The man of whom | write didn't know how
to surmount the difficulty, anyhow. How
did he get away? He had himself shanghaied;
and he cruised up and down a receding world
of mountainous water for five months ere he
saw any land again. Was it a satisfaction for
this man. at a later and more prosperous time.
to return to Honolulu with the bells on
and, to the silvern assonance of the tinkling
cymbals, to put it in that fowery way, pay
the still hanging bills which he had abandoned
by the shanghaiing process. and then to roam
over Hawaii with a benign sort of conscious
ness of having made good! Mayhap it was
The better years offer one many such COM
pensations for having been broke
The biggest compensation OF all, though, is
the joy in living and the love of life which the
broke" one experiences after having got
through with it all. after having permanently
anchored in the smoother waters and housed
over his craft against any possible invading
winds of brokeness; The serene life isn't SO
bad 1t may not be pictorial: but it's
pretty good Yet 1 often think that the man
who has never been "broke flat, out-and-
out, undisguisedly broke-never really can
know the taste and tang of good dinner; the
snugness of warm, well covered bed: the
tepid soapy joy of wallowing in good bath
tub; the sense of security of having a two
dollar note in his pocket: the companionship
of unworried. complaisant people, sure of
themselves and of where they stand. These
be smugly commonplace joys, do you say?
True; but they are all so far on the seemingly