Lynn-made shoe-soles on their seats of honor for a week after.

But your Kanaka fears his medicine man and receives the news of doom
politely. The kahuna tells him that his conduct has displeased some god
or goddess and that he must die. Every kahuna claims what statesmen
call a "pull" with his deities that enables him to have his prayers
answered, while opposition kahunas are snubbed. After a couple of
days the kahuna drops around to see how his victim is getting on,
and generally he finds him in low spirits, with a meagre appetite,
because this process is as reliable as its opposite, which is called
faith-cure. If a man can sufficiently persuade himself that nothing
ails him, he is almost sure to recover from an illness that he hasn't
got; and, by the same token, if he makes himself believe that he is
going to have indigestion, or a fall on the ice, or must die, he
unnerves himself and makes it easy for the expected to happen. If
he runs away and hides, the kahuna's prayers do not work as well,
and if he has been to school and reads the papers, they do not work
at all. Indeed, the islanders have given up white people as tough
subjects, so seasoned in whisky and a wrong religion that curses are
wasted on them as water is wasted on ducks and Kentucky colonels. The
goddess Pele has resigned the foreigner in discouragement.

Well, on this second visit the victim remembers all his misfortunes of
the past two days, his stomach ache, his thirst, his stubbed toe, his
failure to collect eight cents that a neighbor owes him, his nightmare
after a supper of poi,--not mince-pie: just poi,--his discovery of a
bottle too late to know what was in it, and his wife's demand for a
new dress. All these miseries he ascribes to the left-handed prayers
of which he is the subject, and he offers to temporize. As in other
parts of the world, silver is a strong dissuader. If he has hired a
kahuna himself to neutralize his enemy's bad prayers with good ones,
the two voodoo workers will retire and consult as to a settlement,
each preserving a dignity and courtesy worthy of his high profession,
for, although the Roman soothsayers could not keep from snickering
when they met one another in the street, these kahunas really believe
in themselves, for they have prayed too many people out of the world
not to do so.

If an apology and a couple of dollars fail to soften the enemy,
or if the kahunas believe they can raise the stake to three dollars
by