am. One was not compelled by any absurd
etiquette to choose these dishes in any sequence. My left-hand neighbor
was indifferent in choice, and ate everything nearest to him first, and
without order, taking feis or bananas or a goldfish, dozens of shrimps,
a few prawns, a crayfish, and several varos, but informing me, with a
caress of his rounded stomach, that he was saving most of his hunger
for the chicken, pig, and poi. He was a Tahitian of middle age, with a
beaming face, and happy that I spoke his tongue. When the pig and poi
were set before us, he devoured large quantities of them. The poi was
in calabashes, and was made of ripe breadfruit pounded until dough with
a stone pestle in a wooden trough, then baked in leaves in the ground,
and, when cooked, mixed with water and beaten and stirred until a mass
of the consistency of a glutinous custard. He and I shared a calabash,
and his adroitness contrasted with my inexperience in taking the poi
to our mouths. He dipped his forefinger into the poi, and withdrew it
covered with the paste, twirled it three times and gave it a fillip,
which left no remnant to dangle when the index was neatly cleaned
between his lips. Custom was to lave the finger in the fresh-water
shell before resuming relations with the poi.

My handsome neighbor ate four times as much as I, and I was hungry. His
appetite was not unusual among these South Sea giants. I noticed that
he ate more than three pounds of pig and a quart of poi after all his
previous devastation of shellfish, feis, chicken, and taro, besides
two fish as big as both my hands. My right-hand neighbor was Mr. Davey,
an urbane and unreserved American, who informed me in a breath that he
was a dentist, a graduate of Harvard University, seventy-two years old,
and had been in Tahiti forty-two years. He called his granddaughter
of eighteen to meet me, and she brought her infant. Only he of his
tribe could speak English, but she talked gaily in French.

He practised his profession, he said, but with some difficulty, as
the eminent Acting-Consul Williams had by law a monopoly of dentistry
in the French possessions in the South Seas. The monopoly had been
certified to by the courts after a controversy between them, but his
Honor Willi did not enforce the prohibition except as to Papeete,
and besides was very rich, and had more patients than he could
possibly attend.

At the lower end of the mats the bachelors sat,--there were only
three