OF THE SOUTH SEAS 327 



dance-hall of Kelly, the leader of the fish-strike, was 

 vacant, but I heard in imagination the strains of his 

 pagan accordion, and the himene which will never be 

 forgotten by the Tahitians, "Hallelujah! I 'm a bum!" 

 Kelly had gone over the water to the jails of the United 

 States, where life is hard for minstrels who sing such 

 droll songs. 



In Punaauia, the next district to Fa'a, was a school- 

 house and on it a sign : 2x2^4. 



M. Souvy, a government printer of Tahiti, had given 

 the site out of his humble savings. By the sign, in his 

 blunt way, he struck at education which does not teach 

 the simple necessity of progress — common sense. 



^'Cela saute aux yeux'' he had said. 



He was long dead, but his symbol provoked a ques- 

 tion from every new-comer, and kept alive his name and 

 philosophy. I never saw it but I thought of an article 

 I had once written that led to the overturning of the 

 educational system of a country. How all guide-posts 

 point to oneself! Near the school-house, a dozen yards 

 from the salt water, was a native house with a straw 

 roof, a mere old shell, untenanted. 



M. Edmond Brault, the government employee and 

 musical composer, a passenger on the diligence, had with 

 him his violin, intending to spend the day in company 

 with it in a grove. He remarked the tumbledown con- 

 dition of the house, and said: 



"I have sat under that toit de chaume, that straw 

 roof, and talked with and played for a painter who was 

 living there quite apart from the world. He was Mon- 

 sieur Paul Gauguin, and he had a very distingue estab- 

 lishment. The walls of his atelier were covered with 



