THE PI.ANT WORI.D 289 



are represented in the band : Germans, Italians, Knglishmen, and 

 even Greeks. One of the bandsmen was recently married to a native 

 seiiorita. Another, Guido Saccomani, is very much in love, and 

 thinks of marrying and settling on the island. He is a well-educated 

 young man, a Venetian by birth, the son of an officer in the Italian navy. 

 After serving in the Abyssinian war in 1896 he came to America, where 

 his father had friends ; but he could find no work and enlisted in the 

 navy, hoping to go to the Philippines. He showed me a diary which he 

 kept while in Abyssinia. Another bandsman, Herman Schaker, a good- 

 natured German, who plays alto in the brass band and the viola in the 

 string band, has started a little garden of his own. He brought seeds 

 with him from America and has planted some potatoes. The latter have 

 sprouted, but they do not seem to thrive. He came to me in distress 

 because he could not get his cabbage to grow. He is a kindly soul. He 

 often speaks most affectionately of the dear little children of his ' ' Wasch- 

 weib." He is very fat and short. The governor calls him Bismarck.* 

 Several of these bandsmen, who can not speak English, attend my night- 

 school, where I teach by the " natural method," pointing to objects and 

 pronouncing their names in English, explaining the adjectives by objects 

 of various colors, sizes, and shapes, and the verbs by causing the pupils 

 to walk, sit, touch, speak, catch, etc., so that in the course of instruction 

 I only make use of the English language. 



The band has now stopped playing and I go across the plaza to my 

 office on the ground floor of the palace. One of the citizens of the island 

 came this morning, stating that he owns a large tract of land which is lying 

 idle, as he can get no one to work on it. He does not wish to pay taxes 

 on it and will turn the greater part of it over to the government. It will 

 thus be available to the young men who wish to establish ranches for 

 themselves. 



Home to dinner at twelve. Good chicken broth with rice, beef with 

 tomatoes (from tins), chicken, and for dessert pine-apple so sweet that it 

 needs no sugar. Susana brings in a new-blown pink rose (one of my 

 cuttings) growing in a tall dark-blue pot. It makes a pretty center-piece 

 for the table, but it is not nearly so fragrant as the tall roses growing in 

 my yard which Dona Regina sent me three months ago from her garden. 

 They are like ' ' American Beauties ' ' but are smaller and have the 

 fragrance of our old "Hundred-leaves." There is not a rose-aphis on 

 the island. As I start for the kitchen Susana intercepts me, saying that 

 she is preparing a surprise. I cannot imagine what it will be. After 

 dinner Scale and I take a short nap, and at two I go back to my office. 

 The rest of the afternoon I spend auditing the treasury accounts, which 



* This worthy man became ill from drinking coconut toddy. He was sent to the hospital at Yoko- 

 hama, where he died. 



