My Hawaiian Aloha
By Jack London
Editor's Note-In the Hawaiian language, the word“aloha" (literally, love) is the universal
form of salutation.
From the Islands, Mr. London sends a greeting to Cosmopolitan readers.
And it contains something
of great interest.
In the months he has spent
in the most delightful of our territorial possessions, he has obtained knowledge as
to how life is lived
there.
He has worn through the
surface-novelty that invariably fascinates the temporary sojourner coming in contact with practically none of the actual
problems of existence.
This is the first of a short series of articles on present-day
Hawaii.
Page 170
Oh, what's the use? I was going to make the
Hawaii-born talk.
They won't.
They can't.
I shall have to go on and do all the talking
myself.
They are poor boosters.
They even try to boost, on occasion; but the latest
steamship and railroad publicity agent from the mainland
will give them cards and spades and talk all around them
when it comes to describing what Hawaii so beautifully
and charmingly is.
Take surf-boarding, for instance.
A Californian real-estate agent, with that one
asset, could make the burnt, barren heart
of Sahara into an oasis for kings.
Not only did the Hawaii-born not talk about it, but
they forgot about it.
Just as the sport was at its dying gasp, along came
one Alexander Ford from the mainland.
And he talked.
Surf-boarding was the sport of sports.
There was nothing like it anywhere else in the
world.
They ought to be ashamed for letting it languish
It was one of the Islands' assets, a drawing card
for travelers that would fill their hotels and bring
them many permanent residents, etc., etc.
He continued to talk, and the Hawaii-born smiled.
“What are you going to do about it?” they said,
when he buttonholed them into corners.
“This is just talk, you know, just a
line of talk.”
“I’m not going to do anything except talk,” Ford
replied.
“It’s you fellows who’ve got to do
the doing.”
And all was as he said.
And all of which I know for myself at first hand,
for I lived on Waikiki Beach at the time in a tent where
stands the Outrigger Club to-day- twelve hundred
members, with hundreds more on the waiting-list, and
with what seems like half a mile of surf- board
lockers.
