The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1912-03-23

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
sweeter than the new life which had
defrauded him of his own. The boy
spoke Of it as matter of course:
all who live must die, and. Heaven
knows, as the boy implied, he had
lived long enough; and with this he
returned to the dance.
The chains of the Jail birds rang
gayly over the battlements as I babe
farewell to the keeper and the kent.
Among the latter are several of the
graduates of Lahainaluna, the Pro-
testant Theological Seminary of the
kingdom. The little sentinel showed
me out, full Of pride and good cheer
and swelling bravely in his stuffed
jacket; the key clanked unsteady in
the big lock as l set my face toward
town. 1t is said that this prison
Is the despair of the rising genera
ton; that those who are turned from
1t pine until they once more enjoy
its inexpensive hospitality; for here
the merriest and the mildest people
in the world are prisoners.
Courage, my children! If you can
only be naughty enough you, too, in
the course of time, shall inherit the
penitentiary.
Again look upon the reef, but now
from hillslupe skirted by a belt of
perennial verdure; between us a vein
of water, the pulse of the sea, throbs
languidly The reef an amber shoal,
seems to rise and float twice in the
four and twenty hours-as the tide
falls-and to slowly subside mean
while, until much of it is submerged,
but there is always a visible strip of
rank green grass, and upon it is
perched a cluster of low whitewashed
novels just above highwater mark
the whited sepulchers of the lazeret-
to.
1t is possible to drive through the
shadows that ripple between the reef
and the mainland when the tide is
out. Indeed, one may wade through
it then without much diSculty, but
the lazeretto is zealously guarded
when pestilence has filled it with
tenants, and it is rare indeed that
any one succeeds in escaping from
this desolate, wind-swept strand. They
are pretty enough when seen from
shore, these small white novels, and
especially so when, looking from a
distant hilltop, one sees the sum
launch from a rent cloud his golden
bolts upon them, or a rainbow pre-
cipitates its curved torrent in their
midst, flooding them with prismatic
splendor. The reef, or rather that
part of the reef-for it is all one,
though a ship may pass through the
cleft in it at long intervals-seem
like a phantom island to most of us,
for there are times when it has WELL
nigh disappeared and when even the
little huts are almost obscured by
dark cloud-shadows, and then again
It shines in glory and the silver surf
beyond it leaps against a wall of sap
ohire, and the sands glisten like re-
lined gold.
1t was during my third visit to the
Hawaiian capital when, having looked
off upon the reef night and morning,
md at midday and moonlight, from a
serene height, | grew to know it as
theme capable of infinite variation;
kind of poem to which every day,
md almost every hour, added a new
tanza; a picture that was always
complete, though never finished.
About this time it was publicly an
bounced that a great luau would be
iven at the laaaretto, the occasion
eing the anniversary of the staying
f the plague. Now there is no abso-
ute necessity for the introduction of
mallpox into the Hawaiian kingdom;
mong the natives the measles are
efficiently destructive; but the small
OK has appeared and desolated the
eople more than once. In such cases
is hard to segregate the victims,
or love is stronger than death, and
DO often the seeds of death are
ourished in the bosom of love. But
year or more before my third visit,
persistent energy the authorities
altered some hundreds of natives,
nd not few foreigners, upon the
eef, and of these no small proportion
erished, and the bodies of the ma
YES were inferred in the sand. I
mink Of that sad season when look
pom the reef of an evening and be-
old the watch-fres of the quarantine
across the sea, and when,
y daylight, the seQuestered coolies