While the efforts of the Salvation Army were directed with vigor and enjoyed the support of the powers that were in the city, the devil was also well represented in the thriving little nest of humanity, way out there in the middle of the Pacific. This was before the time of the great fire that swept away the Japanese quarter, and before the yoshiwara had been established. Saloons had a pleasant ingenuous fashion of advertising in the daily papers. Such items as, "Drink at the Criterion Saloon," "Visit the Louvre Saloon, for your rickeys," were displayed in bold type. Intoxicated men reeled along the streets at night in the region bordering the waterfront, and assaults of various kinds were not infrequent. All nations were represented in the motley crew who formed the floating cosmopolitan conglomeration drifting about the port. The new republic being the eddy in the middle of the transpacific lanes where human flotsam gravitated, like Hong Kong and Port Said, it had become a nodal point of adventure.
Of course Honolulu itself rose serene and beautiful above this mess of wreckage that washed up on her beach. Beautiful homes were there, on the long avenues lined by royal palms, set in fine grounds, bordered by hibiscus hedges alive with flaming red. The date palm and the fan palm all added to the natural beauty surrounding her public buildings and her dwellings. The solid worth of the place far outweighed the ribald doings of the beach combers, not all of them, let it be said, in dungaree. Well-dressed adventurers were even more numerous, and no doubt far more dangerous, than the unattached sailors of the port.
The life in the Chinese and Japanese quarters, with their hundreds of small shops supplying the modest needs of their countrymen, was most interesting to us. In fact we were compelled to do most of our trading with these merchants, as two dollars per week was of little account in attempting to go shopping on Fort Street in the American or English stores. As for having a regular blowout, with drinks of civilization, at two bits per glass, it was simply not to be thought of. Watermelons, bananas, pineapples, soda pop, and ginger ale were our refreshments after an evening spent at the concert in Emma Square, or Thomas Square, and very often I went to a small Chinese coffee house on Beretania Street for a cup of Kona coffee and a plate of sinkers. If a steamer had arrived it was the custom to have a concert at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel; the band, by the way, being a particularly fine one under direction of Professor Henry Berger, and supported by the Government. King Kalakaua during his famous tour of the world conceived the idea of having such an organization in Honolulu. It was composed of native Hawaiians, all excellent musicians, and he secured Professor Berger to lead it. The frequent concerts inaugurated by King Kalakaua have been continued ever since. Bad as the old king may have been, the band will always remain a large item to his credit. Without it, Honolulu would be a bad place in which to live; many a poor devil has enjoyed the treat of the best music under conditions calculated to conserve its influence, who would otherwise have spent his evening in some hideous dive.
The concerts in the grounds of the Royal Hotel were a sort of dual function so far as I was concerned. When attending them in the company of Mr. Mclnerny I walked boldly into the lobby of the hotel and lolled about on the verandah like a gentleman. When out with Hitchen, Frenchy, Axel, or Tommy, and on the single occasion when we induced Old Smith to forsake the waterfront, I stopped on the lowly outskirts of the crowd among the natives, and the groups of Chinamen, Portuguese, and Japs. We enjoyed the music and had as good a time as the folks on the verandah; in fact we were more comfortable, for we dressed in cool clean dungaree with our cotton shirts unstarched and open at the throat. Pipes were always in order, lavish conversation was indulged in, and we got to be accepted on an equal footing by many of the natives. Nigger, the hatch man, a sort of top boss among these people, was one of the best of Kanakas, which is saying much; a white man under his skin, and a gentleman every inch of him. He introduced us to as exclusive a society as there is in the islands, and we always swore by him in spite of the way he treated us the first few days of our stay in port, but then, as he explained, it was the Republicans he was after, and of course us white fellows could look out for ourselves.
On Sundays, when I was not out driving with Mr. Mclnerny, Frenchy and Axel and myself would wander about the city looking at the strange sights. Tommy got to be one of the sightseers later on, and in our different excursions on foot we covered the place pretty well. The Palace (from the outside), the statue of Kamehameha I, the Museum, and the cottage in which Stevenson lived at Waikiki, were some of the points of interest visited. We also made a long hike out to the Pali. All of this is uninteresting but simply spread upon the record to show that the sailor-man of the old deepwater days, of which I write, was liable at times to enjoy many of the milder forms of dissipation now almost exclusively indulged in by Cook tourists and the winners of voting contests sent abroad by enterprising newspapers.