On the seventh day, August 30, Mark Twain with wife, Livy, and daughter, Clara arrive at Honolulu but cannot leave the ship due to a cholera epidemic. He reminiscences about his earlier visit to the islands in 1866, writes of King Kamehameha I and his son Liholiho. He goes on about corpses in a sunken passenger ship, American missionaries and the leper colony on Molokai.
(I love that song) There has been an interesting and fundamental discussion on the Anthro-L listserv email list recently. Again, it is epistemology. Do you "believe in" evolution? Do you "believe in" gravity? What it comes down to is the willingness to "act as if" [evolution|gravity|etc] is true, just as it seems necessary to act as if you have faith to have faith. A good illustration is the electron. No one has actually seen an electron, you know, with their own eyes except perhaps with the help of some psychoactive substance.
Anecdotes and stories to fill the time at sea. The Boomerang - truth or a lie, A Brahman's memory, U.S. Grant's memory, and a story with no satisfactory conclusion. About four days out from Victoria we plunged into hot weather, and all the male passengers put on white linen clothes. One or two days later we crossed the 25th parallel of north latitude, and then, by order, the officers of the ship laid away their blue uniforms and came out in white linen ones. All the ladies were in white by this time.
A man may have no bad habits and have worse. --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
The Clemens family leaves Paris for New York and the onset of Twains' most extensive lecture tour ever. He "had grown to hate lecturing" but if he was to settle his debts, it was necessary. Livy and Clara would accompany him on this trip. Suzy and Jean would remain with their aunt at Quarry Farm, near Elmira, New York. He would never see Suzy again.
The old one didn't work so well any longer. The glass shelves had already been replaced once, the pull-out trays were cracked and difficult to pull out, and the lid for the butter tray was taped on with red duct tape. Home Depot had a sale on a nearly identical model Whirlpool and we are definitely constrained by size. Unfortunately, we require the door open from the right side. The side that the door hinge is normally found on. No problem, mounting holes are conveniently provided for the hinges along the left side.
The text of this essay can be found on-line at http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_4.3/twain.htm but my reading was done from the version published in The Oxford Mark Twain, included in the Following the Equator volume.
