His favourite method of study was
to go off in the hills back of the University, and there to strip
off his clothes and lie on the grass, soaking in sunshine and health
at the same time that he soaked in knowledge.
But Central California has her winters, and the quest for a Nature
Man's climate drew him on. He tried Los Angeles and Southern
California, being arrested a few times and brought before the
insanity commissions because, forsooth, his mode of life was not
modelled after the mode of life of his fellow-men. He tried Hawaii,
where, unable to prove him insane, the authorities deported him. It
was not exactly a deportation. He could have remained by serving a
year in prison. They gave him his choice. Now prison is death to
the Nature Man, who thrives only in the open air and in God's
sunshine. The authorities of Hawaii are not to be blamed. Darling
was an undesirable citizen. Any man is undesirable who disagrees
with one. And that any man should disagree to the extent Darling
did in his philosophy of the simple life is ample vindication of the
Hawaiian authorities verdict of his undesirableness.
So Darling went thence in search of a climate which would not only
be desirable, but wherein he would not be undesirable. And he found
it in Tahiti, the garden-spot of garden-spots. And so it was,
according to the narrative as given, that he wrote the pages of his
book. He wears only a loin-cloth and a sleeveless fish-net shirt.
His stripped weight is one hundred and sixty-five pounds. His
health is perfect. His eyesight, that at one time was considered
ruined, is excellent. The lungs that were practically destroyed by
three attacks of pneumonia have not only recovered, but are stronger
than ever before.
I shall never forget the first time, while talking to me, that he
squashed a mosquito. The stinging pest had settled in the middle of
his back between his shoulders. Without interrupting the flow of
conversation, without dropping even a syllable, his clenched fist
shot up in the air, curved backward, and smote his back between the
shoulders, killing the mosquito and making his frame resound like a
bass drum. It reminded me of nothing so much as of horses kicking
the woodwork in their stalls.
"The gorilla in the African jungle pounds his chest until the noise
of it can be heard half a mile away," he will announce suddenly, and
thereat beat a hair-raising, devil's tattoo on his own chest.
One day he noticed a set of boxing-gloves hanging on the wall, and
promptly his eyes brightened.
"Do you box?" I asked.
"I used to give lessons in boxing when I was at Stanford," was the
reply.
And there and then we stripped and put on the gloves. Bang! a long,
gorilla arm flashed out, landing the gloved end on my nose. Biff!
he caught me, in a duck, on the side of the head nearly knocking me
over sidewise. I carried the lump raised by that blow for a week.
I ducked under a straight left, and landed a straight right on his
stomach. It was a fearful blow. The whole weight of my body was
behind it, and his body had been met as it lunged forward. I looked
for him to crumple up and go down. Instead of which his face beamed
approval, and he said, "That was beautiful." The next instant I was
covering up and striving to protect myself from a hurricane of
hooks, jolts, and uppercuts. Then I watched my chance and drove in
for the solar plexus. I hit the mark. The Nature Man dropped his
arms, gasped, and sat down suddenly.
"I'll be all right," he said. "Just wait a moment."
And inside thirty seconds he was on his feet - ay, and returning the
compliment, for he hooked me in the solar plexus, and I gasped,
dropped my hands, and sat down just a trifle more suddenly than he
had.
All of which I submit as evidence that the man I boxed with was a
totally different man from the poor, ninety-pound weight of eight
years before, who, given up by physicians and alienists, lay gasping
his life away in a closed room in Portland, Oregon. The book that
Ernest Darling has written is a good book, and the binding is good,
too.
Hawaii has wailed for years her need for desirable immigrants. She
has spent much time, and thought, and money, in importing desirable
citizens, and she has, as yet, nothing much to show for it. Yet
Hawaii deported the Nature Man. She refused to give him a chance.
So it is, to chasten Hawaii's proud spirit, that I take this
opportunity to show her what she has lost in the Nature Man. When
he arrived in Tahiti, he proceeded to seek out a piece of land on
which to grow the food he ate. But land was difficult to find - that
is, inexpensive land. The Nature Man was not rolling in wealth. He
spent weeks in wandering over the steep hills, until, high up the
mountain, where clustered several tiny canyons, he found eighty
acres of brush-jungle which were apparently unrecorded as the
property of any one. The government officials told him that if he
would clear the land and till it for thirty years he would be given
a title for it.
Immediately he set to work. And never was there such work. Nobody
farmed that high up. The land was covered with matted jungle and
overrun by wild pigs and countless rats. The view of Papeete and
the sea was magnificent, but the outlook was not encouraging.
