[Illustration:  EMMA, QUEEN OF KAMEHAMEHA IV.]

The people are surprisingly hospitable and kind and know how to make strangers at home; they have leisure, and know how to use it pleasantly; the climate controls their customs in many respects, and nothing is pursued at fever heat as with us.  What strikes you, when you have found your way into Honolulu society and looked around, is a certain sensible moderation and simplicity which is in part, I suspect, a remainder of the old missionary influence; there is a certain amount of formality, which is necessary to keep society from deteriorating, but there is no striving after effect; there are, so far as a stranger discovers, no petty cliques or cabals or coteries, and there is a very high average of intelligence:  they care about the best things.

They know how to dine; and having good cooks and sound digestions, they add to these one requisite to pleasant dining which some more pretentious societies are without:  they have leisure.  Nothing is done in haste in Honolulu, where they have long ago convinced themselves that “to-morrow is another day.”  Moreover, you find them well-read, without being blue; they have not muddled their history by contradictory telegraphic reports of matters of no consequence; in fact, so far as recent events are concerned, they stand on tolerably firm ground, having perused only the last monthly record of current events.  Consequently, they have had time to read and enjoy the best books; to follow with an intelligent interest the most notable passing events; and as most of them come from families or have lived among people who have had upon their own shoulders some conscious share of government, political, moral, or religious, these talkers are not pedantic, but agreeable.  As to the ladies, you find them charming; beautifully dressed, of course, but they have not given the whole day and their whole minds to the dress; they are cheerful, easily excited to gayety, long accustomed to take life easily, and eating as though they did not know what dyspepsia was.

Indeed, when you have passed a month in the Islands you will have a better opinion of idleness than you had before, though in some respects the odd effects of a tropical climate will hardly meet your approval.  Euchre, for instance, takes the place here which whist holds elsewhere as the amusement of sensible people.

[Illustration:  A HAWAIIAN CHIEF.]

Finally, society in Honolulu is respectable.  It is fashionable to be virtuous, and if you were “fast,” I think you would conceal it.  The Government has always encouraged respectability, and discountenanced vice.  The men who have ruled the Islands—­not the missionaries alone, but the political rulers since—­have been plain, honest, and, in the main, wise men; and they have kept politics respectable in the little monarchy.  The disreputable adventurer element which degrades our politics, and invades society too, is not found here.  You will say the rewards are not great enough to attract this vile class.  Perhaps not; but at any rate it is not there; and I do not know, in short, where else in the world you would find so kindly, so gracefully hospitable, and, at the same time, so simple and enjoyable a society as that of Honolulu.