Education is not an unsolvable problem in the islands, since quite a large number of groups possess convent schools, where even such extras as music, languages, and fancy needlework can be taught.
On the whole, the difficulties of housekeeping are somewhat less than at home, and the cost certainly much smaller. It is true that a good many tinned stuffs are used, and tinned food is always dear; but the cheapness of everything that the soil produces makes up that difference, and the simple standard of living swings the balance still further to the right side. I am of opinion myself that white families would benefit both in comfort and in pocket by adopting the native style of house, which is, as already mentioned, a structure of small neat sticks or poles set very closely and strongly, but not filled in. The roof is always thatched. In such a house, the air circulates freely without any draught, and there is a pleasant, diffused light during the daytime. At night, when native houses are more or less transparent, the privacy-loving white can draw thin cotton curtains across his walls until the lights are put out.
One such house, built for and used by white people, was conspicuous for the simple beauty of the design. The interior was very plainly furnished with a few bamboo tables and chairs, and a light stretcher bed or two. Its curtains were of printed muslin from the store, and its floor was nothing but white coral sand brought from the beach. The house stood sheltered, by tall palms, and the sea was so near that all day one could watch the soft sparkle of the creaming surf through the half-transparent walls, and all night long one slept to the matchless lullaby of the humming reef.
_(Windows blurred with beating mud, grey London roaring by in the rain; haggard faces, and murky summer, and the snake of custom clipping stranglingly about the free man’s throat--O Island wanderer, back in the weary North, does your sea-bird’s heart fly swift from these to those, and-sicken for the lands where you must go no more?)_
Raratonga is full of funny things, if one knows where to look for them. One would not suppose that the tombs of the natives were a likely spot. Yet I would defy the most serious of graveyard moralisers to count over the list of things that the Raratongan buries in the tombs of his departed relatives, without feeling his seriousness badly shaken. Little household ornaments belonging to the deceased are pathetic, certainly; so, in a lesser degree, are the Sunday clothes that often accompany their wearer on the long journey. But what is one to say of bicycles, Japanned bedsteads, and even pianos? All these things have been buried by Raratongans in the big concreted tombs that crop up sociably along the edges of the public road every here and there. The piano, I must add, was dug up again, by order of an indignant missionary, who gave the disconsolate mourners a good lecture on heathenistic practices, and the necessity of drawing the line somewhere.