Illustration
by Benjamin W. Clinedinst from 1899 edition of ROUGHING IT.
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In the rural districts of any of the Islands, the traveler hourly comes
upon parties of dusky maidens bathing in the streams or in the sea without
any clothing on and exhibiting no very intemperate zeal in the matter of
hiding their nakedness. When the missionaries first took up their residence
in Honolulu, the native women would pay their families frequent friendly
visits, day by day, not even clothed with a blush. It was found a hard matter
to convince them that this was rather indelicate. Finally, the missionaries
provided them with long, loose calico robes, and that ended the difficulty
- for the women would troop through the town, stark naked, with their robes
folded under their arms, march to the missionary houses and then proceed
to dress! The natives soon manifested a strong proclivity for clothing,
but it was shortly apparent that they only wanted it for grandeur. The missionaries
imported a quantity of hats, bonnets, and other male and female wearing-apparel,
instituted a general distribution, and begged the people not to come to
church naked, next Sunday, as usual. And they did not; but the national
spirit of unselfishness led them to divide up with neighbors who were not
at the distribution, and next Sabbath the poor preachers could hardly keep
countenance before their vast congregations. In the midst of the reading
of a hymn a brown, stately dame would sweep up the aisle with a world of
airs, with nothing in the world on but a "stovepipe" hat and a
pair of cheap gloves; another dame would follow, tricked out in a man's
shirt, and nothing else; another one would enter with a flourish, with simply
the sleeves of a bright calico dress tied around her waist and the rest
of the garment dragging behind like a peacock's tail off duty; a stately
"buck" Kanaka would stalk in with a woman's bonnet on, wrong side
before - only this, and nothing more; after him would stride his fellow,
with the legs of a pair of pantaloons tied around his neck, the rest of
his person untrammeled; in his rear would come another gentleman simply
gotten up in a fiery necktie and a striped vest. The poor creatures were
beaming with complacency and wholly unconscious of any absurdity in their
appearance. They gazed at each other with happy admiration, and it was plain
to see that the young girls were taking note of what each other had on,
as naturally as if they had always lived in a land of Bibles and knew what
churches were made for; here was the evidence of a dawning civilization.
The spectacle which the congregation presented was so extraordinary and
withal so moving, that the missionaries found it difficult to keep to the
text and go on with the services; and by and by when the simple children
of the sun began a general swapping of garments in open meeting and produced
some irresistibly grotesque effects in the course of re-dressing, there
was nothing for it but to cut the thing short with the benediction and dismiss
the fantastic assemblage.
- Roughing It |
