for their outbursts.

"My place respectable," Lovaina said dignifiedly. "I don' 'low no
monkey bizeness. Drinkin' wine custom of Tahiti. Make little fun,
no harm. If they go that Cocoanut House, get in bad."

Lovaina told me all about it. She was quite hurt at the aspersions
upon her home, and entered the dining-room in a breathing spell to
sit at my table, a rather unusual honor I deeply felt. I pledged my
love for her in Pol Roger, but she would have nothing but water.

"I no drink these times," she explained. "Maybe some day I do
again. Make fat people too much bigger. That flat woman from 'Nited
States, ain't she funny? I think missionary."

From the screened area in which the consuls dined with the broker
one heard:

"Here's to the king, God bless him!" "Hoch der Kaiser!" "Vive la
Republique!" "The Stars and Stripes!" as the glasses were emptied by
the consuls and their wives and host.

Lovaina had taken up the rug in the parlor, and a graphophone
ground out the music for dancing. Ragtime records brought out the
Otoman, a San Franciscan, bald and coatless. He took the floor with
Mathilde, a chic, petite, and graceful half-caste, and they danced
the maxixe. David glided with Margaret, Landers led out Lucy, and
soon the room was filled with whirling couples. A score looked on
and sipped champagne, the serving girls trying to fill the orders
and lose no moment from flirtation. On the camphor-wood chest four
were seated in two's space.

When midnight tolled from the cathedral tower, there was an
uncalled-for speech from a venerable traveler who apparently was not
sure of the date or the exact nature of the fete:

"Fellow-exiles and natives bujus Teetee. We are gathered together
this Fourth of July--"

Cries of "Altai" "Ce n'est-pas vrai!" "Shove in your high! It's
New Year!"

"--to cel'brate the annivers'ry of the death of that great man--"

Yells of "Sit down!" "Olalala!" "Aita maitai!" and the venerable
orator took his seat. He was once a governor of a territory under
President Harrison, and now lived off his pension, shaky, sans teeth,
sans hair, but never sans speech.

The Englishmen and Americans clattered glasses and said "Happy New
Year!" and the Tahitians: "Rupe-rupe tatou iti! I teienei matahiti
api!" "Hurrah for all of us! Good cheer for the New Year!"

Monsieur Lontane, second in command of the police, arrived just in
time to drink the bonne annee. He executed a pas seul. He mimicked a
gre