Flirting

Yes.

What's flirty mean?

Flirty?

Yeah, flirty.

I don't know how to explain it, but I know.

Try.

Just have some fun with it.

Flirty, like, flirt with somebody.

Okay.

Flirty.

Okay.

I didn't know I

S. I wanted to tear it up, to denounce it for what it was.

Flirtation, an inside joke I was never meant to parse.

Instead, I replaced it among Nick's mail pile.

If he noticed, he said nothing.

The religious sentiment of the people is indeed for peace at any price: No pastor can bear arms, and even the layman who does so is denied the sacraments.

In the last war the college of Malua where picked youth are prepared for the ministry lost but a single student: the rest "in the bosom of a bleeding country," and deaf to the voices of vanity and honour peacefully pursued their studies But if the Church looks askance on war, the warrior in no extremity of need or passion forgets his consideration of the church The houses and gardens of her ministers are safe in the midst of armies A way is reserved for themselves along the beach Where they may be seen in their white kilts and jackets Openly passing the lines While not a hundred yards behind The skirmishers will be exchanging the useless volleys Of barbaric warfare Women are also respected They are not fired upon And they are suffered to pass between the hostile camps Exchanging gossip Spreading rumors And divulging to either army The secret counsels of the other This is plainly no savage war It has all the punctilio of the barbarian And all his parade Feasts precede battles Fine dresses and songs decorate and enliven the field And the young soldier comes to camp burning On the one hand To distinguish himself by acts of valour And on the other To display his acquaintance with field etiquette Thus after Mataafa became involved in the hostilities against the Germans and had another code to observe beside his own he was always asking his white advisers if things were done correctly Let us try to be as wise as Mataafa and to conceive that etiquette and morals differ in one country and another We shall be the less surprised to find Samoan war defaced With some unpalatable customs The childish destruction of fruit trees in an enemy’s country cripples the resources of Samoa And the habit of head hunting Not only revolts foreigners But has begun to exercise the minds of the natives themselves Soon after the German heads were taken Mr Khan Wesleyan missionary Had occasion to visit Mataafa’s camp and spoke of the practice with abhorrence Missy Carne Said one chief we have just been puzzling ourselves As to guess where that custom came from but missy Is it not so That when David killed Goliath He cut off his head and carried it before the King? With the civil life of the inhabitants we have far less to do and yet Even here a word of preparation is inevitable They are easy merry and pleasure loving though By far From either the most capable Or the most beautiful Of the Polynesians fine dress is a passion and makes Samoan festival a thing of beauty song is almost ceaseless the boatman sings At the oar The family at evening worship The girls at night in the guest house Sometimes the workman at his toil No occasion is too small For the poets and musicians A death a visit The day's news The day's pleasantry Will be set to rhyme and harmony Even half-grown girls [The occasion arising] Fashion words and train choruses of children for its celebration Song as with all Pacific Islanders Goes hand in hand with dance and both shade into the drama Some of the performances Are indecent and ugly Some only dull Others are pretty funny and attractive Games are popular Cricket matches Were a hundred played Upon a side Endured at times for weeks and ate up the country like the presence of an army fishing the daily bath Flirtation courtship which is gone upon by proxy conversation Which is largely political and the delights of public oratory fill in the long hours But the special delight of the Samoan is the malanga When people form a party and go from village to village junketing and gossiping They are said to go on a malunga Their songs have announced their approach Ere they arrive The guesthouse is prepared for their reception The virgins of the village attend to prepare the kava bowl and entertain them with the dance Time flies in the enjoyment of every pleasure which an islander conceives and when the malanga sets forth the same welcome and the same joys expect them beyond the next cape where the nearest village nestles in its grove of palms To the visitors it is all golden For the hosts it has another side In one or two words of the language the fact peeps slyly out The same word afemoina expresses 'a long call,' and 'to come as a calamity.' The same word lesolosolu signifies ‘To have no intermission of pain,’ and ‘To have no cessation (as in the arrival of visitors).’ And sua used of epidemics bears the sense of being overcome with fire flood or visitors But the gem of the dictionary is the verb alavoa which illustrates its pages like a humorous woodcut It is used in the sense of “to avoid visitors,” but means literally hide in the wood So by the shorthand of popular speech we have the picture of the house deserted, the malunga disappointed and the host that should have been quaking in the bush.

We are thus brought to the beginning of a series of traits of manners highly curious in themselves and essential to an understanding of the war.

In Samoa authority sits on the one hand entranced; on the other property stands bound in the midst of chartered marauders.