Hawaii - James Michener [242]
"In our studies of Polynesia we should start from this premise: Nothing that came to Hawaii remained unchanged; flowers, processes, words and men there found new life and new directions. But we must not be deceived by outward appearances, and especially not by word forms, into estimating the differences to be greater than they actually are. Scratch a Hawaiian, and you find a Tahitian."
Abner's avocation was the Seamen's Chapel, where he would often sit for hours with Chaplain Cridland, the sailor whom he himself had brought to God, and he thought: "Of all things I have accomplished, that accidental conversion of Cridland has borne the most fruit." He felt that no life was more difficult or more fraught with temptation than that of sailors, and he was happy that he had been instrumental in erasing Lahaina's brothels and grog shops.
He existed on a pittance sent by the mission board, for he was no longer a full-fledged missionary, but Dr. Whipple kept close watch upon him, and if he required pocket money, either Janders or Whipple saw to it that he got a little. Once, a visitor, seeing the lonely grass shack, adorned only with the portraits of his children, asked compassionately, "Have you no friends?" And Abner replied, "I have known God, and Jerusha Bromley, and Malama Kanakoa, and beyond that a man requires no friends."
Then, in 1849, exhilarating news reached Lahaina and transformed Abner Hale into a spry, excited father, for Reverend Micah Hale wrote from Connecticut that he had decided to leave New England --it was too cold for his taste--and to live permanently in Hawaii, "for I must see once more the palm trees of my youth and the whales playing in Lahaina Roads." Many mission children, after their years at Yale, wrote the heartening news that they were coming home, for the islands generated a persuasive charm that could exert itself across thousands of miles, but what qualified Micah's letter as unusual was the fact that he was determined to cross overland to California, for he wanted to see America, and he predicted that sometime near the end of 1849, he would be boarding a ship out of San Francisco.
Consequently, Abner found a map of North America and hung it on the grass wall, marking "it each day with his son's imaginary progress across the vast continent, and from deductions that were remarkably accurate, he announced one day to the crowd in the J & W store in late November of 1849, "My son, the Reverend Micah Hale, is probably arriving in San Francisco right now."
When Micah climbed down out of the Sierra Nevadas and started along the Sacramento to the booming San Francisco of the gold rush, he was a handsome, tall young man of twenty-seven, with dark eyes and brown hair like his mother and the quick intelligence of his father. The sallowness and delicate stature of his youth had been transmuted into an attractive bronze, and his chest had filled out from his long hike in the company of gold-seekers crossing the continent. He stepped forward eagerly, as if anticipating excitement at the next tree, and he had won the respect of his fellow travelers by preaching a simple Christianity characterized by God's abiding love for his children, and the respect of the muleteers by nipping straight whiskey when the nights were cold.
In wild and vigorous San Francisco he made acquaintance with many adventurers who had come from Hawaii to the gold fields and was asked to preach in one of the local churches, where after a brief reading of the Bible he captivated his audience by predicting that one day "America will sweep in a chain of settled towns from Boston to San Francisco, and will then move on to Hawaii, to which the American democracy must inevitably be extended. Then San Francisco and Honolulu will be bound together by bonds of love and self-interest, each advancing the work of the Lord."
"Do you consider the Americanization