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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A Chinese man-cook, who
leaves at seven in the evening, is the only servant, except in one
or two cases, where, as here, a native woman condescends to come in
during the day as a nurse.
In the morning the ladies, in their
fresh pretty wrappers and ruffled white aprons, sweep and dust the
rooms, and I never saw women look more truly graceful and refined
than they do, when engaged in the plain prose of these domestic
duties. They make all their own dresses, and when any lady is busy
and wants a dress in a hurry, two or three of them meet and make it
for her. I never saw people live such easy pleasant lives. They
have such good health, for one thing, partly no doubt because their
domestic duties give them wholesome exercise without pressing upon
them. They have abounding leisure for reading, music, choir
practising, drawing, fern-printing, fancy work, picnics, riding
parties, and enjoy sociability thoroughly. They usually ride in
dainty bloomer costumes, even when they don't ride astride. All the
houses are pretty, and it takes little to make them so in this
climate. One novel fashion is to decorate the walls with festoons
of the beautiful fern Microlepia tenuifolia, which are renewed as
soon as they fade, and every room is adorned with a profusion of
bouquets, which are easily obtained where flowers bloom all the
year. Many of the residents possess valuable libraries, and these,
with cabinets of minerals, volcanic specimens, shells, and coral,
with weapons, calabashes, ornaments, and cloth of native
manufacture, almost furnish a room in themselves.
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