The heavy leads of the band were carried by an American with
a two-horsepower accordion. He told me his name was Kelly. He was
under thirty, a resolute, but gleesome chap, red-headed, freckled, and
unrestrained by anybody or anything. He had no respect for us, as had
the others, and had come, he said, for practice on his instrument. He
had a song-book of the Industrial Workers of the World, a syndicalistic
group of American laborers and intellectuals, and in it were scores
of popular airs accompanied by words of dire import to capitalists and
employers. One, to the tune of "Marching through Georgia," threatened
destruction to civilization in the present concept.

"I'm an I. W. W.," said Kelly to me, with a shell of rum in his
hand. "I came here because I got tired o' bein' pinched. Every town
I went to in the United States I denounced the police and the rotten
government, and they throwed me in the calaboose. I never could
get even unlousy. I came here six weeks ago. It's a little bit of
all right."

When Kelly played American or English airs and the Tahitians sang their
native words, he gave the I. W. W. version in English. Some of these
songs were transpositions or parodies of Christian hymns, and one in
particular was his favorite. Apparently he had made it very popular
with the natives of the band, for it vied with the "Himene Tatou
Arearea" in repetition. It was a crude travesty of a hymn much sung
in religious camp-meetings and revivals, of which the proper chorus as
often heard by me in Harry Monroe's mission in the Chicago slums, was:


Hallelujah! Thine the glory! Hallelujah! Amen!