Isles her
unspeakable vocabulary are here. They have been to the Paris, the
premier saloon of Papeete, for their morning's morning, an absinthe,
or a hair of the dog that bit them yester eve.

What jokes they have! Stories of what happened last night in the
tap-room of the cinematograph, how David opened a dozen bottles
of Roederer, and there was no ice, so all alike, barefooted and
silk-stockinged, drank the wine of Champagne warm, and out of beer
glasses; of Captain Minne's statement that he would kill a scion of
Tahitian royalty (not Hinoe) if he did not marry his daughter before
the captain returned from the Paumotus; and of Count Polonsky's
calling down the black procureur, the attorney-general, right in the
same tap-room, and telling him he was a "nigger," although they had
been friends before.

Tahitian and French and English, but very little of the latter,
echoes through the coffee-room. Even I make a feeble struggle to
speak the native tongue, and arouse storms of giggles.

The market-place faces the Mairie, the city hall, and its center
is a fountain beloved of youth. There sit or loll the maidens of
Papeete at night, and titter as pass the sighing lads. There wait
the automobiles to carry the pleasure bent to Kelly's grove at Fa'a,
where the maxixe and the tango rage, the hula-dancers quiver and
quaver, and wassail has no bounds.

When the whites are at dinner, the natives meet in the market-place,
which is the agora, as the place du gouvernment is the forum of the
dance and music of these ocean Greeks.

But at this hour it is wreathed with women, scores squat upon their
mats on the pave, their goods spread before the eyes of the purchasers.

The sellers of the materials for hats are many. The bamboo fiber,
yellowish white, is the choicest, but there are other colors and
stuffs. The women venders smoke cigarettes and are always laughing. Old
crones, withered and feeble, shake their thin sides at their own and
others' jokes.

Already the buyers are coming fast, householders and cooks and
bachelors and beaux, tourists and native beauties.

A score of groups are smoking and chatting, flirting and running
over their lists. Carriages and carts are tied everywhere, country
folk who have come to sell or to buy, or both, and automobiles, too,
are ranged beside the Mairie.

Matrons and daughters, many nationals, are assembling. The wife
of a new consul, a charming blonde, just from New Jersey, has her
ba