You Cannot Get Away | My Web Site Page 144 Chapter 02 Page 03

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"If you will freely admit that this may not be great," I said, "I am on your side. I do not mind your saying, 'This touches me with interest and delight; but it is not to be reckoned among the lords of the garden.' What I object to is your saying, 'This is great and eternal.' I feel that I should be able to respond to the great poet, if he flashed out among us; but he must be great, and especially in a time when there really is a quantity of very beautiful verse. I suspect that perhaps this time is one that will furnish a very beautiful anthology. There are many people alive who have written perhaps half a dozen exquisite lyrics, when the spring and the soaring thought and the vision and the beautiful word all suddenly conspired together. But there is no great, wide, large, tender heart at work. No, I won't even say that; but is there any great spirit who has all that and a supreme word-power as well? I believe that there is more poetry, more love of beauty, more emotion in the world than ever; and a great many men and women are living their poetry who just can't write it or sing it."

In this manner we continued to improve our situation by "exchanging" with every canoe we met which happened to be better than our own, until finally our princely friend ordered a gay party of merry-makers out of a fine large skiff, which they cheerfully "exchanged" for our leaky canoes and departed singing happily, feeling honored indeed that this opportunity had come to them to serve the great chief Ratu Pope Seniloli; and thus suffering qualms of conscience, we sailed to our destination leaving a wake of confusion behind us. Moreover I forgot to mention that many natives had by Ratu Pope's orders been diverted from their intended paths and sent forward to announce the coming of himself and the "American chiefs." Thus does one of the Royal house of Mbau proceed through Fiji.

Because of their pastoral life the Navaho are not villagers. Their dome-shaped, earth-covered hogans are usually grouped two or three in the same locality. The summer house is a rude brush shelter, usually made with four corner posts, a flat top of brush, and a windbreak of the same material as a protection against the hot desert siroccos. The hogan proper, used for storage during the summer, affords a warm and comfortable shelter to its occupants through the cold winters of their high altitude. When a hogan is built it is ceremonially consecrated, and if an occupant should die in it, it is forever deserted and is called _tsi{~COMBINING BREVE~}ndi hogan_, "evil house." No Navaho will go near such a house or touch anything taken from it. If a meal were cooked with decayed wood from a hogan a hundred years deserted, a Navaho, even if starving, could not be induced to partake of it. Thus strong are the religious beliefs of this primitive people.

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