May 22 Tuesday – Sam returned to Honolulu on the schooner Kai Moi (The King) [Frear 55; MTL 1: 335n5]. Frear writes, “During the few days between returning from Maui and sailing for Hawaii, he attended the legislature and wrote two letters on that subject” [56].
Sam wrote his sister-in-law, Mollie Clemens, that he had just returned from Maui. He expressed resentment he still felt for Orion’s refusal to take Henry Camp’s offer for the Tennessee Land.
My Dear Sister:
I have just got back from a sea voyage—from the beautiful island of Maui. I have spent 5 weeks there, riding backwards & forwards among the sugar plantations—looking up the splendid scenery & visiting the lofty crater of Haleakala. It has been a perfect jubilee to me in the way of pleasure. I have not written a single line, & have not once thought of business, or care, or human toil or trouble or sorrow or weariness. Few such months come in a lifetime. I set sail again, a week hence, for the island of Hawaii, to see the great active volcano of Kileaua. I shall not get back here for 4 or 5 weeks, & shall not reach San Francisco before the latter part of July. So it is no use to wait for me to go home. Go on yourselves. It is Orion’s duty to attend to that land, & after shutting me out of my attempt to sell it (for which I shall never entirely forgive him,) if he lets it be sold for taxes, all his religion will not wipe out the sin. It is no use to quote Scripture to me, Mollie, —I am in poverty & exile now because of Orion’s religious scruples. Religion & poverty cannot go together. I am satisfied Orion will eventually save himself, but in doing it he will damn the balance of the family. I want no such religion. He has got a duty to perform by us—will he perform it? I have crept into the old subject again, & opened the old sore afresh that cankers within me. It has got into many letters to you & I have burned them. But it is no use disguising it—I always feel bitter & malignant when I think of Ma & Pamela grieving at our absence & the land going to the dogs when I could have sold it & been at home now, instead of drifting about the outskirts of the world, battling for bread. If I were in the east, now, I could stop the publication of a piratical book which has stolen some of my sketches. I saw the American Minister today & he says Edwin McCook, of Colorado Ter. has been appointed to fill his place—so there is an end to that project. It is late—good-bye, Mollie.
Yr Bro
Sam
[MTL 1: 341-2; MTPO]. Notes: Orion and Molly were leaving Nevada, and would take a steamer from San Francisco to New York, and eventually return to Keokuk. Beadle & Company of New York had plagiarized Sam’s Frog Story (Beadle’s Dime Book of Fun No. 3, Apr. 1866), which evoked Sam’s remark about “the publication of a piratical book.” Edward M. McCook (1833-1909) commissioned on Mar. 21 to replace James McBride (1802-1875) as the US minister resident to Hawaii. McCook was a Union general in the Civil War and governor of Colo. Terr (1869-75). Also, Sam’s ninth letter dated “Honolulu, April, 1866: SAD ACCIDENT ” ran in the Union:
And etiquette varies according to one’s surroundings. In the mining camps of California, when a friend tenders you a “smile” or invites you to take a “blister,” it is etiquette to say, “Here’s hoping your dirt’ll pan out gay.” In Washoe, when you are requested to “put in a blast,” or invited to take “your regular pison,” etiquette admonishes you to touch glasses and say, “Here’s hoping you’ll strike it rich in the lower level.” And in Honolulu, when your friend the whaler asks you to take a “fid” with him, it is simple etiquette to say, “Here’s eighteen hundred barrels, old salt!” But “Drink hearty!” is universal. That is the orthodox reply, the world over. In San Francisco sometimes, if you offend a man, he proposes to take his coat off, and inquires, “Are you on it?” If you are, you can take your coat off, too. In Virginia City, in former times, the insulted party, if he were a true man, would lay his hand gently on his six-shooter and say, “Are you heeled?” But in Honolulu, if Smith offends Jones, Jones asks (with a rising inflection on the last word, which is excessively aggravating), “How much do you weigh?” Smith replies, “Sixteen hundred and forty pound — and you?” “Two ton to a dot, at a quarter past eleven this forenoon — peel yourself; you’re my blubber!” [Day 85; Schmidt].