It is the "dead season." I
have met with none except Mr. Nordhoff, who is writing on the
islands for Harper's Monthly, and his charming wife and children.
She is a most expert horsewoman, and has adopted the Mexican saddle
even in Honolulu, where few foreign ladies ride "cavalier fashion."
My friends all urge me to write on Hawaii, on the ground that I have
seen the islands and lived the island life so thoroughly; but
possibly they expect more indiscriminate praise than I could
conscientiously bestow!
Honolulu is in the midst of the epidemic of letter writing which
sets in on the arrival of the steamer from "the coast," and people
walk and drive as if they really had business on hand: and the
farewell visits to be made and received, the pleasant presence of
Mr. Thompson, and Mr. and Mrs. Severance, of Hilo, and the hasty
doing of things which have been left to the last, make me a sharer
in the spasmodic bustle, which, were it permanent, would
metamorphose this dreamy, bowery, tropical capital. The undeserved
and unexpected kindness shown me here, as everywhere on these
islands, renders my last impressions even more delightful than any
first. The people are as genial as their own sunny skies, and in
more frigid regions I shall never sigh for the last without longing
for the first. . . . .
up to here
S.S. COSTA RICA.
