Since that time, in the
course of various long stays, he had earned the kamaaina
distinction.
As for Ida Barton, young matrons of her own age (privily wondering
how she managed to keep her figure) met her with arms around and
hearty Hawaiian kisses. Grandmothers must have her to tea and
reminiscence in old gardens of forgotten houses which the tourist
never sees. Less than a week after her arrival, the aged Queen
Liliuokalani must send for her and chide her for neglect. And old
men, on cool and balmy lanais, toothlessly maundered to her about
Grandpa Captain Wilton, of before their time, but whose wild and
lusty deeds and pranks, told them by their fathers, they remembered
with gusto--Grandpa Captain Wilton, or David Wilton, or "All Hands"
as the Hawaiians of that remote day had affectionately renamed him.
All Hands, ex-Northwest trader, the godless, beach-combing,
clipper-shipless and ship-wrecked skipper who had stood on the
beach at Kailua and welcomed the very first of missionaries, off
the brig Thaddeus, in the year 1820, and who, not many years later,
made a scandalous runaway marriage with one of their daughters,
quieted down and served the Kamehamehas long and conservatively as
Minister of the Treasury and Chief of the Customs, and acted as
intercessor and mediator between the missionaries on one side and
the beach-combing crowd, the trading crowd, and the Hawaiian chiefs
on the variously shifting other side.
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