the board for salad and cake-making, and the drink-bar. A few feet
removed from this table, and against the wall, was a camphorwood
chest on which two might sit in comfort and three might squeeze at
angles. In the chest was kept all the bed and table linen, so that
one might often be disturbed by the quest of sheets or napkins.

Upon this little porch the kitchen, bath, and toilets opened, a few
feet from the table. It was the sleeping and amusement quarters
of five dogs, the loafing place for the girls, the office of the
hotel, the entry for guests to the dining-room or to the other
conveniences. Through it streamed all who came to eat or drink or
for any other purpose. The hotel having grown slowly from a home,
hardly any changes of plumbing had been made, and men and women
in dressing-gowns, in pajamas, or in other undress came and went,
under the interested gaze of idlers and drinkers, and they had often
to endure intimate questions or badinage. All were on a footing as
to the arrangements, and I saw the haughty duchess of the Noa-Noa
follow Lovaina's American negro chauffeur, while a former ambassador
waited on the chest. There was no distinction of rank, since Tahiti,
excepting for an occasional French official, was the purest democracy
of manners in the world, a philosophy the whites had learned from
the natives, who think all foreigners equally distinguished.

Those not of the South Seas, and unused to the primitive publicity
of the natural functions there, suffered intensely at first from
embarrassment, but in time forgot their squeamishness, and perhaps
learned to carry on conversations with those who drank or chatted
outside.

The Tahitian cook slept all day between meals on a chair, with his