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MOOSEHEART MAGAZINE
Jewels in Uncle Sam’s Necklace
“,Going Down”—One of Dr. Hart’s “Conversations With Six Hundred Thousand”
scape and moving picture and poem. The center of the Pacific is the Hawaiian Islands. The metropolis of the islands is Honolulu. The social center of Honolulu is Waikiki Beach, where during eighteen out of the twenty-four hours, you may hear the shohts of the bather. With few exceptions these are not the native islanders coming back to renew their national sport is surf-riding. Hawaiian ladies would consider the bathing costumes improper— so do some of the visitors. Nobody need go to the Marquesans or Tahiti to test the bathing ordinances. Waikiki is bad enough for any sensible person.
The Approach to Peredition
Don’t go to Waikiki. If you insist on that kind of going down, take it out at Coney Island or Lake Michigan. Save your money and your energies to make the short one night run from Honolulu to Hilo on the larger island of Hawaii. There are two mountains, Maunakea and Maunaloa, on that island, both of them about as high as Mont Blanc and about as impressive as the sand dunes at South Chicago.
Take an auto and go up to the Volcano House in order again to “go down,” but make your arrangements in writing, for Hilo contains chauffeurs who are highway robbers, who act on Mark Twain’s idea when he went to see Niagara Palls and “found the hack fares so much higher than the Falls that he never noticed the latter.”
Follow up the excellent road through tropic trees and undergrowth as thick as Washington pie. Arrive at the Volcano House and look down. Before you lies a vast oval basin, with perpendicular cliffs from 1,000 to 2,000 feet high, the bottom covered with masses of black rock, amidst which puffs of smoke show where the lava is still heated.
Set no foot upon that accursed plain for the infernal fires are but a few inches below the surface. Ride instead in your machine through seven miles of snaky road amidst tree ferns and gorges, till you come out on a desolate waste which is part of the crater floor. A quarter of a mile away is what acts like a storm at sea, and a blast furnace, and a gas works and a munition factory and a foundry cupola, and Rheims on fire, and the kitchen chimney not drawing, and a naval salute .־just fired by a fleet of a thousand ships. That great cylinder of curling vapor, forever waves and shudders above the chasm of Kildawa.
Going Down to the Bottom
Here ft last you reach the end of all things, for as you approach you discover that below the crater is another smaller crater, out of which lushes this tremendous blast of vapor. You approach the edge and up comes a little typhoon of sulphur gases, which all but ends your investigation. By this time darkness has crept on and through the clouds you perceive two hundred feet below you, the awful tides of a lake of fire. For that tormented liouid is the top of a pipe of molten rock which reaches down to the inflamed center of the world.
No words can tell, no description can make clear, the terrific spectacle of a volcano let loose. Those gases are deadly. A bird flying across the crater falls and is nothing hut a shower of ashes long before it reaches the bottom. Down below, you see a flat rolling carpet of melted rock. Out gushes a line of clear pure fire; it spreads, it widens, it rolls up into breakers of living fire. Where a moment ago there was but a dark surface, now there is a sheet of blinding light. The lava falls in an awful surf which beats against itself with a noise like the grinding of dead men’s bones.
Enormous masses of jagged rock float on this fierry stream. A few weeks ago the crater was full to the brim, and that hill of tumbled rocks that you see over there was pushed off the edge. The cliff under your feet glows. The fervid clouds drive at you. From the abyss rises anew the hoarse storm of thick, heavy, devilish liquid rock. No wonder the Hawaiians used to cast in sacrifices. No wonder they worshipped Pele, fearful goddess of fire.
If Kildawa were in Chicago, here would be no need of Sunday Schools or Salvation Armies; the terror of it would purify the city. If Kildawa were in Heaven it would melt down the pearly gates. You think of your sins, and still more of other people’s sins. The wind rises, a gust of rain sweeps over you which affects the living fire down in that pit as though it were gasoline. The gases fly at the visitors. We can stay no longer. We crawl up gratefully from the bottom of the abyss and leave this wondrous next-to-hell.
After all a volcano is no place for comfortable | life. I prefer MOOSEHEART!
By PROFESSOR ALBERT BUSHNELL HART Harvard University-----Mooseheart Governor
your breakfast. The brown orchestra, armed with the absurd little banjoes commonly called ukeleles (which were never known to the original Hawaiian) thumbs and sings and jazzes and emulates the liveliest etaoin records of Hawaiian songs.
Life on a first class Pacific liner is not sea life at all. It is angel-life. An excellent table with extra refreshments on deck two or three times a day, lots of fruit, good cooking, dancing for the young things, books to read, and rows of steamer chairs under the white awnings. It becomes a profession to look out over the ever-blue sea, to guess the ship’s run and to regret that you must land in a few hours. Never was the downward road made more attractive in its first stages.
Then early one morning, you rouse yourself and from the window of your up-to-date stateroom, behold the shadowy forms of far blue islands. As the sun rises you make the land, a coast of precipices and breakers and black volcanic rocks, till you turn the cape, and the interior of the island of Oahu is revealed, with the spires and skyscrapers of Honolulu standing out of the cocoanut groves. Oh, why should the road to the pit be so much more alluring than the rugged track to the mountain ?
Uncle Sam’s Jewels
The Hawaiian Islands are the brightest gem in the necklace of the United States and at the same time they are the jewel in the hilt of Uncle Sam’s sword. Nowhere in all the broad Pacific with its star clusters of lovely islands is there a group so suited to the temperate folks from temperate zones. The climate is always the same. Trees in leaf and flowers blooming every day in the year. The surrounding sea stands at the temperature of about 75 degrees, the twelve month round. It is stroked by the -trade winds, which take the edge off the hot days, and yet are rarely disturbed by a tempest. The old inhabitants of Honolulu still tell with bated breath of a great storm a few years ago that “blew trees down.”
The islands have no poisonous snakes, no dangerous animals, few insect pests, except a little creature about ten inches long which looks like a fine-tooth comb and is called the centipede, which likes to take walks along plump strangers, and leaves his tracks imbedded in the flesh as a guarantee of good faith. The Hawaiian Islands were never properly enjoyed by their own people, who never dreamed of lands where blizards rage and heat waves depopulate. It is the people from the States who really appreciate these Blessed Islands. They have taken up and improved the valuable lands, have produced the sugar and pineapples, have built the little railroads, bought the steamers, constructed the city of Honolulu with its bungalows, its incredibly beautiful avenues and variegated trees and hedges.
Wait a moment, do not pack your trunk to go to the Hawaiian Islands, there to settle down and bring up the children, where there are no coal bills and light clothing' suffices. The islands are occupied already, not by the Hawaiian people, who are mournfully declining in numbers, but by the Chinese, the Japanese, the Koreans, the Filipinos -—besides a small number of Portuguese and Russians. Hawaiian is not suited to the American workman or farmer, who wants to help found a community like that of Oregon or California. If he is all dressed this is no place for him to go.
The more reason why the tourist and the visitor should enjoy the beauty and the charm of these wonderful islands, where life is a perpetual land-
THE men whom I have seen succeed best in life have always been cheerful and hopeful men, who went about their
business with a smile on their faces, and took the changes and chances of this life like men, facing rough and smooth alike as it came.
—Charles Kingsley.
Going down? what’s going
down? Some of the Moose Order went “down to Philadelphia” the other day to assure Brother Ford that no matter how cold and unsympathetic his town might be, all the Moose in other places love him and admire that bronze tablet of him which the Philadelphians were celebrating. A committee of the Supreme Council has recently been “down South” and got themselves into a lot of trouble, because the _ Southern Moose are so enthusiastic that they would like to have an old men’s home at every county seat between Washington and New Orleans.
Supreme Dictator Brown has been “down in Texas,” that great big, booming, boisterous, blossoming state which expects to take the championship of the largest population away from New York before long. Supreme Secretary Brandon has been “down on his luck,” haying been elected a member of the Illinois Constitutional Convention only to find that it means hard work. The Dictator General is “down on the piazza” rocking something small and warm and soft and precious, —the youngest daughter of Moosedom. The Mooseheart football team goes “first down” on opponent’s ten-yard line, and presently there is a touch-down and a goal. All the world seems to lie “going down” somewhere.
Going down is, however, contrary to Moose principles, which are always steering you uphill. The whole idea of the Order is to climb mountains every day. The six hundred thousand are expected to join hands and help each other on the uphill road, however steep and toilsome, whatever the burden and heat of the day. The big Moose despises fatigue, - he is always mounting a Pike’s Peak, aspiring to the great, pure white summit. Why go down anywhere? Because if you want to' see the realities of life, you must go down sometimes; you must know what is at the bottom of human nature, you must understand the dangers of the black gulf into which humanity is prone to fall. Tnat is, it is a magnificent thing to climb Long’s Peak and look off from the top of the world; but it is also a tremendous experience to go down into the ,depths of Haleakala and the deeper deep of the crater of Kilaved.
Starting Down.
For this Conversation is of things dark and dreadful; of a journey into reals of woe and fountains of everlasting fire. If you are going down into Kildawa, you will test its terrific fun and its unholy satisfaction. You will get nearer to the infernal regions than is safe or comfortable. The way down is a way of gloom.
Fortunately for some people Kildawa is a long distance from home,—yet how easy to reach. All you have to do is to step on a Pullman at your own railroad station, and make perhaps one change to reach San Francisco. Oh, what a place is San Francisco! A climate that chills the warm blooded visitor from Maine or North Dakota, but you forget the climate in the delight of being there! Such lively interesting streets! Such stately buildings! Such endless and beautiful excursions! Such admirable hotels! Such superlative restaurants! Such a superior Moose Home!
San Francisco is like kissing and that other rapture which has been exterminated by the Volstead Act! Once isn’t enough—the more times you go to San Francisco, the stronger your desire to go again. If San Francisco only had Mount Raniel on one side and the volcano of Haleokalani on the other, so that you could go up, up, up on Sundays and plunge down, down, down on Saturday night, it would be the terestrial Paradise.
Crossing Over
If Tophet will not come to Mohamet, then Mohamet must go to Tophet. For to go to California and not see the Hawaiian Islands is to eat the stick of your lollipop and then find the lollipop melted. Therefore take ship on one of the comforting steamers of the Matson Line, Pier 25, sailing at 12 o’clock, every week. Choose the Matsonia, which was an excellent transport during the war, and is now again the best ship of a good line. Let none of you chance voyagers on the Great Lakes with their zigzag profile, let none of you frequenters of the adventurous Atlantic and the gusty Gulf, think that you have been at sea. A voyage on the Pacific is not a voyage . It is a six day dream. It is an airship adventure in perfect safety. The flying fish scoot aboard in order to be broiled for