Then, too, Dad belonged to the Royal Hawaiian Yacht Club,
and took us racing and cruising. Dad could never get away from the sea,
you know. When I was fourteen I was Dad's actual housekeeper, with
entire power over the servants, and I am very proud of that period of my
life. And when I was sixteen we three girls were all sent up to
California to Mills Seminary, which was quite fashionable and stifling.
How we used to long for home! We didn't chum with the other girls, who
called us little cannibals, just because we came from the Sandwich
Islands, and who made invidious remarks about our ancestors banqueting on
Captain Cook--which was historically untrue, and, besides, our ancestors
hadn't lived in Hawaii.
"I was three years at Mills Seminary, with trips home, of course, and two
years in New York; and then Dad went smash in a sugar plantation on Maui.
The report of the engineers had not been right. Then Dad had built a
railroad that was called 'Lackland's Folly,'--it will pay ultimately,
though. But it contributed to the smash. The Pelaulau Ditch was the
finishing blow. And nothing would have happened anyway, if it hadn't
been for that big money panic in Wall Street. Dear good Dad! He never
let me know. But I read about the crash in a newspaper, and hurried
home.
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