Alfred had registered all these obsolete things in his memory, while most Tahitians had no detailed knowledge of them, being crammed with the lore of theology, of saints, of automobiles, and moving pictures, and prize-fights for money.  Matatini Afaraauia, son of Faaruia, of chiefly descent, a boy of seven, and of a guileless, bewitching disposition, made me his intimate friend, and through his sharp eyes I discovered phenomena that might have escaped my untutored mind.  He lifted a stone, and beneath it was a spider larger than a tarantula.  It was tabu to Tahitians, harmless, and a voracious eater of insects.  Spiders are larger in these tropics than elsewhere, and here, too, the male was smaller than the female.  Being seized and slain and devoured by his lady love even in the very transports of husbandly affection, it had been bitten in on his subconscious sensibilities that diminutiveness was life-saving, and natural selection had made him inferior in size to his cannibal mate.  He had a very shrinking attitude in her presence, as Socrates must have affected about Xantippe.

At eleven o’clock of the forenoon I, with Matatini and Raiere, a youth of twenty, strolled down the grassy street to the garden of Alfred, where Choti might be painting under the trees, and if a halloo did not bring him bounding to us, we went on to T’yonni’s, where he would surely be, either under the mango trees or in the salon.  Choti had many canvases completed, some six feet long, and he also did excellent silver-point heads of the villagers.  Tahitians were indifferent models, as they were not much interested in pictures, not seeing objects, as we do, and found posing irksome.  Only Choti’s friendship for them, his bonhomie, and many merry jokes in their tongue could keep them still for his purposes.

T’yonni’s house was half a mile from my own.  A quarter of a mile farther, and the same distance from the junction of lagoon and river, we had our swimming-place.  On an acre or two of grass and moss, removed from any habitation, grew a score of lofty cocoas, and under these we threw off our pareus or trousers and shirts.  The bank of the stream was a fathom from the water which was brackish at high tide and sweet at low.  With a short run and a curving leap we plunged into the flowing water.  It was refreshing at the hottest hour.  The Tahitians seldom dived head first, as we did, but jumped feet foremost, and the women in a sitting posture, which made a great splash, but prevented their gowns from rising.  As I remarked before, we three Americans bathed stark when with men, but the modest Tahitian men never for a moment uncovered themselves, but wore their pareus.  Captain Cook said that in their houses he had not seen a single instance of immodesty, though families slept in one room.  Choti avowed that he had to make love to his girl models to induce them to pose in the altogether, for money would not make them adopt the garb of Venus.