These Men Generally Marry Well; Often - Like Hardy Of Hannamanoo - Into
The Wood Royal.
Sometimes they officiate as personal attendant, or First Lord in
Waiting, to the king.
At Amboi, one of the Tonga Islands, a vagabond
Welshman bends his knee as cupbearer to his cannibal majesty. He
mixes his morning cup of "arva," and, with profound genuflections,
presents it in a cocoa-nut bowl, richly carved. Upon another island
of the same group, where it is customary to bestow no small pains in
dressing the hair - frizzing it out by a curious process into an
enormous Pope's head - an old man-of-war's-man fills the post of
barber to the king. And as his majesty is not very neat, his mop is
exceedingly populous; so that, when Jack is not engaged in dressing
the head intrusted to his charge, he busies himself in gently
titillating it - a sort of skewer being actually worn about in the
patient's hair for that special purpose.
Even upon the Sandwich Islands a low rabble of foreigners is kept
about the person of Tammahammaha for the purpose of ministering to
his ease or enjoyment.
Billy Loon, a jolly little negro, tricked out in a soiled blue jacket,
studded all over with rusty bell buttons, and garnished with shabby
gold lace, is the royal drummer and pounder of the tambourine. Joe, a
wooden-legged Portuguese who lost his leg by a whale, is violinist;
and Mordecai, as he is called, a villainous-looking scamp, going
about with his cups and balls in a side pocket, diverts the court with
his jugglery.
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