Charles Warren Stoddard

Congress Springs. Saratoga, California 9- July - '86

Miss Eudora Garouth

Kindly enclose the Prentice Mulford card to F. J. Needham, [z?] 35-- West 14th St, New York City, [illeg] I think she can fill it out for you.

I cannot.

Very truly yours

Charles Warren Stoddard

3/

Charles Warren Stoddard

The South Sea Bubble

Whether a man burns his ships behind him, or suffers the top of his fleet by the torch of the incendiary, his situation is trying and peculiar and there are but two [mores?] left him in the game of life - either he must step down and out, with drawing from the field altogether, or he must build anew: Mr Gibson proposes to build anew, provided he can get this government to back him. For all business transactions the backer requires security; if he doesn't, we pity him.

This government cannot be considered unreasonable when it requires of Mr Gibson security, before stocking his ship-yard and setting him afloat again. Mr Gibson's security, while if it were weighed in the balance might be found wanting, is not to be sneezed at; in fact if one were to sneeze at it, [the?] chances to me the security would glitter and break like the South Sea bubble

4/

What it is.

Primary at this moment is a word almost big enough to sink the Hawaiian islands. When the organ of a third or fourth rate American City has the privilege of sneering at us for our limited square miles, our decreasing native population and our primitive court, and when insults are flung in our faces with impunity because there is not spirit enough or pride enough left in Hawaii for her to rise and shine, as she might if she chose, it is folly to prate of primacy.

We should like to know just what Mr. Gibson means by primacy. Shall we look in the dictimary of the definitin of that portly part of speech, or shall we reach in the dim recesses of Mr. Gibson's imagination and find that primacy as he defined it, is but the first rung of a golden ladder ascending in his dreams? This is the ladder he will climb and climb, carrying the head and front of the kingdom before him - like a small boy playing with a big false face - until at last the ladder topples and lands him and the Kingdom higher than a kite"in the depths" First primacy in t e Pacific; then the empire of the seas, the youngest nation of the world full of life, hope ambition--can you not see his subjects basking like young eagles in the sunshine of prosperity? What follows? Kindly negotiations with those races whose vitals have been sapped by time: this height attained he - Gibson, the insitgator of primacy, become the arbitrator of contending powers, the patron of effete machines and ultimately inaugurates the federation of the world. Ecce Gibson, at the Top of the heap with the Hawaiian Kingdom on his knee. Truly there is no god but God, and Gibson is his propect with a Mecca in Lanai!!

5/

That is the dream, this the reality--- if ever the prophet is able to hoodwink a government which has very properly been modest up to date and is unques tionably reasonable and just: It will be Mr. Gibson's pleasing duty, one for which he is eminently qualified, to visit in turn the island satellites that glimmer in the reflected splendor of Hawaiian supremacy: the privileged rulers of these dependencies will breathlessly await the warning from the watch-towers as the royal ambassador approaches, the fetes which have been in preparation will be speedily consummated and being favorable and the schooner getting in on time.

All the glittering paraphernalia of these regal visits will be packed away in the Advertiser office to be used again when called for-- in the South Pacific they are of no avail; Glass leads, calicoes and fish-hooks are more to the purpose in the lower latitudes. No perfumed and purple sails will be expected or required or be even practicable, no silken tackle, nor siilver oars, nor poop of beaten gold; If indeed--

"A strange invisible perfume hits the sense "Of the adjecent wharves (?)"

It will be that of pitch, salt junk and bilge water. But the dreamy Gibson, passing the time of day with this or that unbreeched savage; leaving his cares and his compliemts at the reefs where the inhabitants are not "at home" and never have been; calling at inviting clusteres of cocoa palms just above high-water mark where the beche-de-mer men, dismayed at his approach, slink into ambush; Gibson the prime primer of this primacy, the "child of the Ocean and of God," the author of the "Prison of Weltevreden", and of several of our woes

This page is not transcribed, please help transcribe this page