Polynesia.

THE white man comes to the coral islands of the Pacific —perhaps only as a visitor.

Gladly he leaves behind him the city with its clang of steel; its roar of traffic: the welter of toil. He brings the complexes of highly civilised man. * * * * At first, he mixes company only with the white men. He shuns the brown man, as one of lower caste.

The simple island music pleases his ear. He gazes upon the Hula-Hula dancers. Somewhere in the dim re cesses of his mind a mysterious note is struck —a response to the rhythm and movement of the dance. The slumbering embers of desire are fanned. The fibre of the white man weakens.

A change comes over him. He tarries awhile. * * * * He goes to bathe in the lagoon. The moonlight scenes entrance him.

Softly the music of the guitar and the melody of song float upon the air.

The fragrant scent of tropical flowers whispers to him of love.

The white man masters a word or two or the brown man’s tongue. He learns the love words.

He lingers awhile longer. * * * * The brown bodies of virile women meet his gaze on every hand. Women smile upon him. ... A spell is cast over the white man.

He stays longer than he intended. * * * * There is simple food to be had almost without toil—coconut and banana; taro and kumara and bread fruit. The lagoon is abundant of fish.

He tastes of the enchanted Fei—the fruit which is said to enter into the soul and to chain the visitor for ever to the South Seas. Visions of the Lotus-eater come to him.

The white man dreams of a freer life. * * * * “Why,” he asks, “should I go back to toil?”

Civilisation, with its endless drudgery, is a bondage: a cheat in disguise, stealing from man his freedom and rest. To hell with civilisation and its implacable screw upon the body and soul!

“I shall break with my tribe; go my own way. I shall stay.” * * * * So the white man builds for himself a house of Purau saplings, thatched with the plaited fronds of coconut palm.

He frees himself of the conventions of civilisation. He lives apart—his desires satisfied. No longer he strives for a place in the ranks of “Society.” * “Gone native!” say the other white men. —D.