all his fortune?

OCEANA. But am I supposed to mourn over that? Why, I'd naturally be
happy about that!

LETITIA. Oceana!

OCEANA. But surely.. wouldn't you be happy about it?

MRS. MASTERSON. My child, one is not supposed to set so much store by
mere money...

OCEANA. But Aunt Sophronia, money is power! And isn't anybody glad to
have power? What else did I come here for?

MRS. MASTERSON. I had hoped you had come home for some other things. ..
to see your relatives, for instance.

ETHEL. Here's father!

OCEANA. Uncle Quincy!

DR. MASTERSON. [Enters.] My dear girl! You have come! [Embraces her.]
Why, what a picture you are! A very storm from the tropics! My dear
Oceana!

OCEANA. I'm so glad to get here.

DR. MASTERSON. Yes, indeed! I can believe it! And a strange experience
it must have been... your first plunge into civilization!

OCEANA. Yes, Uncle Quincy! It's been horrible!

DR. MASTERSON. Horrible, my dear? In what way?

OCEANA. It's been almost too much for me. Really... I could understand
how it might feel to be sick!

DR. MASTERSON. Why, what did you see?

OCEANA. Everything! It rushed over me, all at once! The people... their
dreadful faces! And such noises and odors and sights!

DR. MASTERSON. I hadn't realized...

OCEANA. And then the saloons! Rows and rows of them! It is ghastly!

LETITIA. My dear cousin, mother and I contribute regularly to a
temperance society.

OCEANA. But that hasn't helped, has it? I'm almost wild about such
things--they were the real reason I came home, you know.

MRS. MASTERSON. How do you mean?

OCEANA. They had got to my island! They are turning it into a hell!

DR. MASTERSON. In what way?

OCEANA. Why, it's a long story. I didn't write... it would have taken
too long. Two years ago there was a ship laid up... and the crew found,
quite by accident, that our island rock is all phosphate; something
very valuable... for fertilizer, it seems. So they bought land from the
natives, and now there's a company, and a trading-post, and all that.
And oh, my people are going all to pieces!

MRS. MASTERSON. The natives, you mean?

OCEANA. Yes... the people I have loved all my life. And I've tried so
hard... I've pleaded with them, I've wept and prayed with them! But
they're lost!

LETITIA. You mean rum?

OCEANA. I mean everything. Rum, and cocaine, and sugar, and canned food,
and clothes, and missionaries... all civilization! And worse yet, Aunt
Sophronia..