n give us as what we can
find in him that is worth our while. The light that a Goethe,
a Thoreau, or a Kipling can project into Arcadia is mirrored
in his own nature.

If one mistakes not the temper and mind of this generation,
we are living in an age that is not content to let perish one
seed of thought or one single phase of life that can be
rescued from the drift of time. We mourn the extinction of
the buffalo of the plains and of the birds of the islands,
[Page 13] rightly thinking that life is somewhat less rich and full
without them. What of the people of the plains and of the
islands of the sea? Is their contribution so nothingless that
one can affirm that the orbit of man's mind is complete
without it?

Comparison is unavoidable between the place held by the dance
in ancient Hawaii and that occupied by the dance in our
modern society. The ancient Hawaiians did not personally and
informally indulge in the dance for their own amusement, as
does pleasure-loving society at the present time. Like the
Shah of Persia, but for very different reasons, Hawaiians of
the old time left it to be done for them by a body of trained
and paid performers. This was not because the art and
practice of the hula were held in disrepute--quite the
reverse--but because the hula was an accomplishment requiring
special education and arduous training in both song and
dance, and more especially because it was a religious matter,
to be guarded against profanation by the observance of tabus
and the performance of priestly rites.

This fact, which we find paralleled in every form of communal
amusement, sport, and entertainment in ancient Hawaii, sheds
a strong light on the genius of the Hawaiian. We are wont to
think of the old-time Hawaiians as light-hearted children of
nature, given to spontaneous outbursts of song and dance as
the mood seized them; quite as the rustics of "merrie
England" joined hands and tripped "the light fantastic toe"
in the joyous month of May or shouted the harvest home at a
later season. The genius of the Hawaiian was different. With