own.  Very early in the day, for instance, he ceased eating with his knife.  It was plain he was determined in all things to wring profit from our visit, and chiefly upon etiquette.  The quality of his white visitors puzzled and concerned him; he would bring up name after name, and ask if its bearer were a ‘big chiep,’ or even a ‘chiep’ at all—­which, as some were my excellent good friends, and none were actually born in the purple, became at times embarrassing.  He was struck to learn that our classes were distinguishable by their speech, and that certain words (for instance) were tapu on the quarter-deck of a man-of-war; and he begged in consequence that we should watch and correct him on the point.  We were able to assure him that he was beyond correction.  His vocabulary is apt and ample to an extraordinary degree.  God knows where he collected it, but by some instinct or some accident he has avoided all profane or gross expressions.  ‘Obliged,’ ‘stabbed,’ ‘gnaw,’ ‘lodge,’ ‘power,’ ‘company,’ ‘slender,’ ‘smooth,’ and ‘wonderful,’ are a few of the unexpected words that enrich his dialect.  Perhaps what pleased him most was to hear about saluting the quarter-deck of a man-of-war.  In his gratitude for this hint he became fulsome.  ‘Schooner cap’n no tell me,’ he cried; ’I think no tavvy!  You tavvy too much; tavvy ‘teama’, tavvy man-a-wa’.  I think you tavvy everything.’  Yet he gravelled me often enough with his perpetual questions; and the false Mr. Barlow stood frequently exposed before the royal Sandford.  I remember once in particular.  We were showing the magic-lantern; a slide of Windsor Castle was put in, and I told him there was the ‘outch’ of Victoreea.  ‘How many pathom he high?’ he asked, and I was dumb before him.  It was the builder, the indefatigable architect of palaces, that spoke; collector though he was, he did not collect useless information; and all his questions had a purpose.  After etiquette, government, law, the police, money, and medicine were his chief interests—­things vitally important to himself as a king and the father of his people.  It was my part not only to supply new information, but to correct the old.  ‘My patha he tell me,’ or ‘White man he tell me,’ would be his constant beginning; ’You think he lie?’ Sometimes I thought he did.  Tembinok’ once brought me a difficulty of this kind, which I was long of comprehending.  A schooner captain had told him of Captain Cook; the king was much interested in the story; and turned for more information—­not to Mr. Stephen’s Dictionary, not to the Britannica, but to the Bible in the Gilbert Island version (which consists chiefly of the New Testament and the Psalms).  Here he sought long and earnestly; Paul he found, and Festus and Alexander the coppersmith:  no word of Cook.  The inference was obvious:  the explorer was a myth.  So hard it is, even for a man of great natural parts like Tembinok’, to grasp the ideas of a new society and culture.