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finest touches in his humor.
Further on he says: "I had not shaved since I left San Francisco.
As soon as I got ashore I hunted up a striped pole, and shortly
found one. I always had a yearning to be a king. This may never
be, I suppose, but, at any rate, it will always be a satisfaction to
me to know that, if I am not a king, I am the next thing to it.
I have been shaved by the king's barber."
Honolulu was a place of cats. He saw cats of every shade and
variety. He says: "I saw cats--tomcats, Mary-Ann cats, bobtailed
cats, blind cats, one-eyed cats, wall-eyed cats, cross-eyed cats,
gray cats, black cats, white cats, yellow cats, striped cats,
spotted cats, tame cats, wild cats, singed cats, individual cats,
groups of cats, platoons of cats, companies of cats, armies of cats,
multitudes of cats, millions of cats, and all of them sleek, fat,
and lazy, and sound asleep." Which illustrates another
characteristic of the humor we were to know later--the humor of
grotesque exaggeration, in which he was always strong.
He found the islands during his periods of inaction conducive to
indolence. "If I were not so fond of looking into the rich mass of
green leaves," he says, "that swathe the stately tamarind right
before my door, I would idle less, and write more, I think."
The Union made good use of his letters. Sometimes it printed them
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