House BeloiiQ'iiip-s: The Furniture of a House. 



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Here is the Hawaiian house, plain, no ornament, seldom a garden around it, 

 none, — not even a trace, — of the elaborate carving of the Maori, nor the fantastic 

 roof-work of the New Guinea or Solomon Islanders, a shelter surel}' but not yet a 

 home, and that long distance between house and home so well known to the Anglo- 

 Saxon is wonderfully shortened here in the tropics. Yet the Hawaiian recognizes the 

 difference: the empty house, however convenient, however well built, has something 

 dismal, even uncanny, and the belief of the untutored Carib, derided b}- the thought- 

 less, is natural and i-easonable. He thinks that an unfinished house, — unfinished 

 until it is inhabited b}- articles of domestic use, if not by human beings, is the chosen 

 retreat of the devil, and the builders when they leave their work each night, place a 

 simple wooden cross at the door aud window openings. The devil is easier to keep 

 out than to get out ! 



Centuries ago among the hills of Palestine, we get a glimpse of the same belief. 

 "Then he saith, I will return into mj- house whence I came out; and when he is come, 

 he iindeth it ciupty^ swept and garnished. Then goeth he and taketh with himself 

 seven other spirits more evil than himself, and they enter in and dwell there." 



Something of the same feeling prevails among the Polynesians, and the con- 

 secration ceremonies held before a new house is occupied always, I think, include a 

 prayer that the evil spirits that may have entered the empty house, may be forever 

 banished by the happy human life about to dwell in it. 



We have seen the Hawaiian cut the last tuft of grass on the thatch, over the 

 door-lintel and that bit of grass was symbolic not merel}' of the last touch of the 

 builder, but a warning to any evil-disposed akua to keep out. When that tuft was 

 cut and the kahuna had asked the blessing of the gods, the great gods and the lesser 

 gods and the whole forty thousand gods, the owner and his family entered in with their 

 belongings : a good and happy familj^ is the best talisman, I know of, to keep evil 

 spirits (or thoughts) at a distance. 



We consulted David Malo in the building of the house and we ma}' do the same 

 in the furnishing, but the picture he gives us is not wholly a pleasant one, and we 

 may suspect that he, perhaps unconsciously, contrasts the former state of his country- 



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