The Hawaiian Archipelago - Six Months Among The Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, And Volcanoes Of The Sandwich Islands By Isabella L. Bird
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These Ladies
In Eight Years Have Never Left Lahaina.
Other people may think it
necessary to leave its broiling heat and seek health and recreation
on the mountains, but their work has left them no leisure, and their
zeal no desire, for a holiday.
A very solid, careful English
education is given here, as well as a thorough training in all
housewifely arts, and in the more important matters of modest dress
and deportment, and propriety in language. There are thirty-seven
boarders, native and half-native, and mixed native and Chinese,
between the ages of four and eighteen. They provide their own
clothes, beds, and bedding, and I think pay forty dollars a year.
The capitation grant from Government for two years was 2325 dollars.
Sister Phoebe was my cicerone, and I owe her one of the pleasantest
days I have spent on the islands. The elder Sister is in middle
life, but though fragile-looking, has a pure complexion and a lovely
countenance; the younger is scarcely middle-aged, one of the
brightest, bonniest, sweetest-looking women I ever saw, with fun
dancing in her eyes and round the corners of her mouth; yet the
regnant expression on both faces was serenity, as though they had
attained to "the love which looketh kindly, and the wisdom which
looketh soberly on all things."
I never saw such a mirthful-looking set of girls. Some were cooking
the dinner, some ironing, others reading English aloud; but each
occupation seemed a pastime, and whenever they spoke to the Sisters
they clung about them as if they were their mothers.
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