Page:Diary of One Month in Honolulu.pdf/36



O alien land in all the world has any deep, strong charm for me but that one; no other land could so longingly and beseechingly haunt me sleeping and waking, through half a lifetime, as that one has done. Other things leave me, but it abides; other things change, but it remains the same. For me its balmy airs are always blowing, its summer seas flashing in the sun; the pulsing of its surf-beat is in my ear; I can see its garlanded craigs, its leaping cascades, its plumy palms drowsing by the shore; its remote summits floating like islands above the cloud-rack; I can feel the spirit of its woodland solitudes; I can hear the plash of its brooks; in my nostrils still lives the breat of flowers that perished twenty years ago. —Mark Twain.