The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1909-05-30

- spreading hau tree arbor in the
pretty Moana Hotel park, idled IN the
drowsy afternoon of a Honolulu day,
absently tapping his puttees with
swagger- stick and gazing with unin-
terested eyes ut the odd outrigger
canoes and long surfing boards as they
bobbed about on the big rollers which
doomed upon the sandy beach at his
feet. His eyes took in the canoes
as they rode the crests, the paddlers
dipping rapidly and throwing up spray
and the bows turning ripping wind
rows of sapphire water.
Sturdy brown-skinned and broad
shouldered rowers propelled the outrig-
gers through the coral reefs into the
beautiful crescent beach Of Waikiki,
and here and there curious-looking sails
bellied shoreward in the Kona breeze
The yellow and black craft bumped and
sagged along the crests but came on
steady and answering in a wild, ex-
hilarating, toboggan-like race toward
the beach. AS they neared the shore
the broad bladed paddles dipped deep
and they swung at right angles before
the monotonous series of rollers, and,
with sterns uplifting, the bows pointed
again toward the far sea waste of the
South Seas.
1t was just at the time of day before
the sun begins it's downward course to-
ward the great ocean, and long before
the great golden disc balances its lower
rim upon the very edge of the far
horizon, bathing the sea with dazzling
mantle of gold and ploughing long,
glittering, binding path to the
beach Just below. Under the shady
hau and upon the broad, cool lanais of
the hotel, whitehead japanese boys
were serving tea to groups of travellers
and townsfolk, for it was the hour
when the fashionable set gathered for
the daily social lorgnetting. Here and
there Claiborne observed society ma
irons and debutantes of Gotham, Wash
ington, Boston, Denver and San Fran
cisco, many of whom he had met at the
various military posts where his regi-
ment had been stationed. Here was
the wife of British naval officer, wait
ing for her husband s cruiser to come
up from the South Seas; there the bride
of a new American minister en- route
to his post in the Orient; over there,
the center of an animated group the
President s daughter, homeward bound
from Manila, urged her companions to
abandon tea-cups and join her in
canoeing party; and, the cynosure of
oil II N uTh
beauty and exquisite Paris gown made
her at once the most interesting of all.
And in the midst of all this entranc-
ing scene, Captain Jack Claiborne, til
Cavalry, U.S.A., idled and dreameaa, his
thoughts thousands of miles away. 1t
was Memorial Day, the day when the
veterans of the Civil War marched to
the little cemetery in the valley of
Nuuanu, to lay wreaths upon the
mounds beneath which their old com
rades ever slept on their last tenting
ground His thoughts dwelt on that
Memorial Day years ago when he APP
peared before his father, whose name
as a general officer during the terrible
conflict of civil warfare between North
and South was household word in
Ouluh nVuiCo, anu VIM, lCbllCb, iCllSo
upon his son to carry the honored name,
with added honor among coming gen
erations. He recalled that day bitterly
for he had been summoned home from
college to explain student prank mag
nitied by PROFESSIONAL criticism-when
his father called him coward. That
day he had left home-how long ago it
seemed.