gets up and eats a hearty supper. Altogether he is a very happy creature,
and by no means a bad one. You need not lock your door against him; and an
election and a luau occasionally, give him all the excitement he craves,
and that not of an unwholesome kind.

What there is happy about his life he owes to the fine climate and the
missionaries. The latter have given him education enough to read his Bible
and newspaper, and thus to take some interest in and have some knowledge
of affairs in the world at large. They and their successors, the political
rulers, have made life and property secure, and caused roads and bridges
to be built and maintained; and the Hawaiian is fond of moving about. The
little inter-island steamer and the schooners are always full of people
on their travels; and as they do not have hotel bills to pay, but live on
their friends on these visits, there is a great deal of such movement.

It would hardly do to compare the Hawaiian people with those of New
England; but they will compare favorably in comfort, in intelligence,
in wealth, in morals, and in happiness with the common people of most
European nations; and when one sees here how happily people can live in a
small way, and without ambitious striving for wealth or a career, he
can not but wonder if, after all, in the year 2873, our pushing and
hard-pushed civilization of the nineteenth century will get as great
praise as it gets from ourselves, its victims.

[Illustration: HAWAIIANS EATING POI.]




CHAPTER VI.