POLYNiiSIAN RESEARCHES. 331 
duties inculcated on Christian parents; yet the children 
could but ill brook any restraint. I have seen a child, 
not more than six years old, strike or throw stones at 
his mother, and the father would oftentimes be scarcely 
more regarded. 
The mothers were now anxious to influence the minds 
of their children, and gain their respect by kindness. 
The fathers sometimes had recourse to harsher measures. 
Hoibu had two sons that were a source of great 
trouble to him. One of our number went one day into 
his house, which was a native dwelling, with no other 
ceiling than the inside of the roof, the ridge-pole extend¬ 
ing along the centre, about twenty feet from the floor. 
After talking some time with the man, the visitor heard 
something rustling in a long basket of cocoa-nut leaves 
at the top of the house, and, looking up, saw the legs and 
arms of a boy protruding from the basket. On inquiring 
the cause of this, Hoibu said, the boy had been disobe¬ 
dient, and, in order to convince him of his error, he had 
first talked to him, and then put him into the basket, 
and, passing a rope over the ridge-pole, had fastened one 
end of it to the basket, and, pulling the other, had dravm 
him up there, that he might think on his disobedience, 
and not be guilty of the same again. He was informed 
that it was rather a novel mode of punishment, and that 
it was hoped he would not keep him there long. He 
said, no, he should lower him before the evening, 
A similar mode of punishment may, I believe, have been 
used in some of our public schools, in which a kind of 
large birdcage has been substituted for a basket; but of 
this Hoibu had never heard. The invention was his own, 
and it was scarcely possible to repress a smile at the 
ludicrous appearance of the suspended boy. 
