It Is A Fresh Item Of The Infinite Curse Which Has Come Upon This Race, And With Molokai In Sight The Hesperides Vanished, And I Ceased To Believe That The Fortunate Islands Exist Here Or Elsewhere On This Weary Earth.

My destination was the industrial training and boarding school for girls, taught and superintended by two English ladies of Miss Sellon's sisterhood, Sisters Mary Clara and Phoebe; and I found it buried under the shade of the finest candlenut trees I have yet seen.

A rude wooden cross in front is a touching and fitting emblem of the Saviour, for whom these pious women have sacrificed friends, sympathy, and the social intercourse and amenities which are within daily reach of our workers at home. The large house, which is either plastered stone or adobe, contains the dormitories, visitors' room, and oratory, and three houses at the back, all densely shaded, are used as schoolroom, cook-house, laundry, and refectory. There is a playground under some fine tamarind trees, and an adobe wall encloses, without secluding, the whole. The visitors' room is about twelve feet by eight feet, very bare, with a deal table and three chairs in it, but it was vacant, and I crossed to the large, shady, airy schoolroom, where I found the senior sister engaged in teaching, while the junior was busy in the cook-house. 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. I heard them read the Bible and an historical lesson, as well as play on a piano and sing, and they wrote some very difficult passages from dictation without any errors, and in a flowing, legible handwriting that I am disposed to envy. Their accent and intonation were pleasing, and there was a briskness and emulation about their style of answering questions, rarely found in country schools with us, significant of intelligence and good teaching. All but the younger girls spoke English as fluently as Hawaiian. I cannot convey a notion of the blitheness and independence of manner of these children. To say that they were free and easy would be wrong; it was rather the manner of very frolicsome daughters to very indulgent mothers or aunts. It was a family manner rather than a school manner, and the rule is obviously one of love. The Sisters are very wise in adapting their discipline to the native character and circumstances. The rigidity which is customary in similar institutions at home would be out of place, as well as fatal here, and would ultimately lead to a rebound of a most injurious description. Strict obedience is of course required, but the rules are few and lenient, and there is no more pressure of discipline than in a well-ordered family. The native amusements generally are objectionable, but Hawaiians are a dancing people, and will dance, or else indulge in less innocent pastimes; so the Sisters have taught them various English dances, and I never saw anything prettier or more graceful than their style of dancing. There is no uniform dress. The girls wear pretty print frocks, made in the English style, and several of them wore the hibiscus in their shining hair. Some of the older girls were beautiful in face as well as graceful in figure, but there was a snaky undulation about their movements which I never saw among Europeans. All looked bubbling over with fun and frolic, and there was a refinement and intelligence about their expression which contrasted favourably with that of the ordinary female face on the islands.

There are two dormitories, excellently ventilated, with a four-post bed, with mosquito-bars, for each girl, and the beds were covered with those brilliant-coloured quilts in which the natives delight, and in which they exercise considerable ingenuity as well as individuality of taste. One Sister sleeps in each dormitory, and these highly-educated and refined women have no place of retirement except a very plain oratory; and having taken the vow of poverty, they have of course no possessions, none of the books, pictures, and knick-knacks wherewith others adorn their surroundings. Their whole lives, with the exception of the time passed in the oratory, are spent with the girls, and in visiting the afflicted at their homes, and this through eight blazing years, with the mercury always at 80 degrees!

The Hawaiian women have no notions of virtue as we understand it, and if there is to be any future for this race it must come through a higher morality.

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