ction conducive to
indolence. "If I were not so fond of looking into the rich mass of
green leaves," he says, "that swathe the stately tamarind right
before my door, I would idle less, and write more, I think."

The Union made good use of his letters. Sometimes it printed them
on the front page. Evidently they were popular from the beginning.
The Union was a fine, handsome paper--beautiful in its minute
typography, and in its press-work; more beautiful than most papers
of to-day, with their machine-set type, their vulgar illustrations,
and their chain-lightning presses. A few more extracts:

"The only cigars here are those trifling, insipid, tasteless,
flavorless things they call Manilas--ten for twenty-five cents--and
it would take a thousand of them to be worth half the money. After
you have smoked about thirty-five dollars' worth of them in the
forenoon, you feel nothing but a desperate yearning to go out
somewhere and take a smoke."

"Captains and ministers form about half the population. The third
fourth is composed of Kanakas and mercantile foreigners and their
families. The final fourth is made up of high officers of the
Hawaiian government, and there are just about enough cats to go
round."

In No. 6, April the 2d, he says: "An excursion to Diamond Head, and
the king's cocoanut grove, was planned to-day, at 4.30 P. M., the
party to consist of half a dozen gentlemen and three ladies. They
all started at the appointed hour except myself. Somebody remarked
that it was twenty minutes past five o'clock, and that woke me up.
It was a fortunate circumstance that Cap. Phillips was there with
his 'turn-out,' as he calls his top buggy that Cap. Cook brought
here in 1778, and a horse that was here when Cap. Cook came."

This bit has something the savor of his subsequent work, but, as a
rule, the humor compares poorly with that which was to come later.

In No. 7 he speaks of the natives singing American songs--not always
to his comfort. "Marching Through Georgia" was one of their
favorite airs. He says: "If it had been all the same to Gen.
Sherman, I wish he had gone around by the way of the Gulf of Mexico,
instead of marching through Georgia."

Letters Nos. 8, 9, and 10 were not of special importance. In No. 10
he gives so