George Hoyt Allen - A Yankee in the Far East

That boat was all right, too. Good ship, good service – particularly good service – Chinese help; and anyone who has ever sailed with Chinese crews, waiters and room boys, knows what that means – nothing better in that line. I had a fine stateroom and a good room boy – that boy was a treasure.

I cottoned to that boy the minute he grabbed my baggage at the wharf, and blandly said, "You blong my," as he led me to my stateroom.

There was an obnoxious sign in that stateroom which read: "No Smoking in Staterooms." I settled for the long voyage, hung a coat over that sign, and lit up.

Wong Lee flagged me with a word of warning: "No can slmoke stlate room. Slmoke loom, can do."

"Wong," I said, "how fashion you talkee so? 'No can slmoke stlate loom!' No tlouble slmoke stlate loom. Can slmoke stlate loom easy, see?"

If anyone tells you the Chinese can't see a joke, tell them to guess again. Wong saw that little one – saw it through a cloud of smoke, at that. Wong shut my stateroom door, like a boy in the buttery stealing jam, and said: "Lofficers findee out. They flobid."

"All right, Wong, I won't tell them if you don't," I said. And Wong didn't – Wong certainly didn't betray me.

The further we sailed the more I became attached to the boy – he took such excellent care of me – I got so I really loved that boy.

All Wong's other duties seemed easy compared to his efforts, in my behalf, to see that my slight and harmless infraction of the ship's rules should not be discovered. If I dropped a little ash, Wong was on hand to brush it up. A tell-tale cigar stub, carelessly left – Wong was there to whisk it out of sight with: "Lofficers may come insplection any time. No can tell when."

It wasn't my uneasiness at fear of being found out that robbed me of some of the pleasures of the trip, but an anxious fear that Wong, 'round whom the tendrils of my heart's affections were gaining strength each day as we neared the mystic land of the rising sun – my great fear was that before we landed at Yokohama, Wong would surely burst in his efforts to keep the smoke in my stateroom blown out of the port-hole.

Now this ship is different. No silly rules that drive a man out of his room onto the deck, or the smoking room, when he feels like drawing a little inspiration from the weed that cheers but don't inebriate – I like this ship.

"Land ho!" Hawaii in the distance.

"Under the setting sun, in the Mid-Pacific, lie the Islands of the Hawaiian group, which present to the traveler or home-seeker more alluring features than are combined in any other country in the world. Nowhere else are such pictures of sea and sky and plain and mountain, such magnificence of landscape, such bright sunshine and tempering breeze, such fragrant foliage, such brilliant colorings in bush and tree, such dazzling moonlight.

"With a climate world-excelling for its equableness, these happy islands afford a refuge for those who would escape the rigors of cold or heat encountered in the temperate zones; an entertaining resort for the pleasure-seeker, an almost virgin field of research for the scientist, a sanitarium for the ill, weary or overwrought. For the man who would build a home where conditions of life are most nearly ideal, and where nature works with man and not against him, Hawaii smiles a radiant welcome.

"It is withal an entrancing land, these mid-sea dots, for the combination of tropical sunshine and sea breeze produces a climate which can be compared to nothing on any mainland, and by reason of peculiar situation, to that of no other island group. Hawaii has a temperature which varies not more than 10 degrees through the day, and which has an utmost range during the year from 85 degrees to 55 degrees. Sweltering heat or biting cold are unknown, sunstroke is a mythical name for an unthought thing, a frost-bite is heard of no more than a polar bear.

"Conjure up a memory of the most perfect May day, when sunshine, soft airs and fragrance of buds and smiling Nature combine to make the heart glad, multiply it by 365, and the result is the climate of Hawaii. The sky, with the blue of the Riviera and the brilliance of a sea-shell, is seldom perfectly clear. Ever the fleecy white clouds blowing over the sea form masses of lace-like broidery across the blue vault, adding to the natural beauty, and when gilded or rouged by sunrise or sunset make the heavens a miracle of color.

"And, as in Nature's bounty the climate was made close to perfection, so the good dame continued her work and gave to the land such features as would make not alone a happy home for man, but as well a pleasure ground: for there are mountains and valleys, bays and cataracts, cliffs and beaches in varied form and peculiar beauty, foliage rich in color and rare in fragrance, flowers of unusual form and hue, and all without a poisonous herb or vine, or a dangerous reptile or animal. To fit the paradise was sent a race of people stalwart in size, hospitable, merry, and music-loving. The door is always open and over its lintel is ' Aloha ,' which means 'Welcome.' All are given cordial greeting on the summer shores of the Evening Isles, and nowhere else may be found so many joys and such new lease of life as under Hawaii's smiling skies.

"More prominent than any other cause for this condition of affairs is the fact that Hawaii is windswept throughout the year. The northeast trades bring with them new vitality, and make of Hawaii a paradise where life is pleasure all the year round. From out of the frozen north, picking from the blossoming whitecaps the fragrant and sustaining ozone, sweeping across the breakers to caress the land, comes the constant northeast trade-wind. It is not a strong, harsh blow at all, rather a fanning breeze – Nature's punkah. The average velocity for the year is but eight miles per hour. The mission of the trade-wind is a beneficent one always. Cyclones or hurricanes in Hawaii are unknown."

I didn't write the above. That is a piece of pure plagiarism on my part. I snitched it from a folder put out by the Hawaiian Promotion Society.

The first time I saw that folder I got hold of it on shipboard a few hours before reaching Honolulu the first time I came here, years ago. I read it through and smiled like Noah's neighbors when he allowed there was going to be a wet spell – and got off the ship and "did" Honolulu.

I kept on smiling, albeit not cynically.

No living man can adequately describe the beauties of these islands. I just wandered around in a daze until I found myself on top of one of their mountains, and when I took it all in I felt as if I'd burst if I didn't say something, and I began apostrophizing Hawaii in a rapturous rhapsody.

I felt a good deal better after that, but as I was pressed for time I had to leave the islands and hike along; or I thought I had to. I did, at least.

But that rhapsody stands. The islands are still here, and as lovely as ever.

What I can't understand is, that there are only 191,000 inhabitants on these islands, with room for several times that many; and something over a billion in the rest of the world. I don't know why I'm not living here myself, and for the life of me I don't know why I leave them – my ultimate aim has been to get to Heaven.

I can only account for it on one theory: I own a house and lot and some land in Central New York, and I'm so busy shoveling snow outdoors and coal indoors from some time in November to some time in April, and during May and June getting some stuff started, hoping it won't get nipped by the late frosts, and working it along before September frost gets it – in the meantime saving it from more bugs than a fellow, if he saves his crop, can take time to learn the names of – what with hustling that stuff through between frosts and saving it from pests, and planning the while to be in shape to get some coal to keep from freezing to death the coming winter – a fellow tied up like that can't come to Hawaii to live. I suppose that billion or so who are not living in the Hawaiian Islands are all fixed in some such a way.