Why The Trade Store Made Money
p. 90 · Read in the full issue
T3APA FRISBIE must have enjoyed trading because he made a game of selling thu A Puka-Pukans goods that they were planning to buy anyway—but at a late:; date. If a customer wanted only 10 matchsticks, Papa would explain thij possibility of strong winds that would use up six sticks all at once. And if thi. customer ran out of matches in two days, the store might not be open. So wh;. not buy a whole box of matches, which would cost only sixpence.
One day when business was slow, Papa said to Jakey and me, “Kids, from nov on I won’t open any of the new smelly cosmetics (powder, soap, or hair oil), o:< fishhooks; but I shall pretend that the stuff I have in the store now is new. Juss watch me fool old Tuapiko”. Tuapiko was passing by the store on his way to tak: a snooze in the palm grove.
“Tuapiko! My friend!” Papa called. “How are you? Come, I have three fresl twists of tobacco set aside especially for you. Here, come out of the sun and smel its freshness. You are filled with new life the moment you smoke this particular twist. And your eyes will delight at its tremendous power to make you see weL in the dark.”
By this time Tuapiko was standing inside the door, still uncertain. Papa lee loose his big thunderbolt. “Your sweetheart will love this tobacco. It makes hes weak and you strong. Kindly feel how moist it is.” Papa carefully handed Tuapikc the tobacco. “And here is smelling hair oil—it is called Three Flowers, meaning there are three different kinds of flower scents in this one bottle. It comes all thf way from an unknown land.”
“E, Ropati, is this the oil white women use in those lands?”
“Yes, yes! That is why they smell so good. Your sweetheart will love yon for this present. Here, I shall sell it to you for only one shilling and sixpence.”
Soon Tuapiko was leaving for the coconut grove to smoke his tobacco and dream of nightfall, when he would overwhelm his girl friend’s heart with the smell oo tobacco and Three Flowers hair oil.
When he was gone. Papa made a note under Tuapiko’s name in the ledger. HI knew that Tuapiko still had two shillings and sixpence left from the five shilling? he had gotten for his copra sack the last time the schooner called. All the mone;s the Puka-Pukans made was eventually returned to the trading station before thir boat came back. —An anecdote of Robert Dean Frisbie, recalled by his daughter Johnny in hes new book “The Frisbies of the South Seas”, recently published in New York b;c Doubleday and Co.