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WE VISIT THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS.
"We sail the ocean blue, Our saucy ship's a beauty.
We're sailors good and true, And attentive to our duty." So sang the jolly mariners on the good ship Pinafore, and so might have sung the members of the Chicago and All-American base-ball teams as they sailed out through the Golden Gate and into the blue waters of the Pacific on the afternoon of November 18, 1888.

Only at that time we were not in the least sure as to whether the Alameda was a beauty or not, pleasant as she looked to the eye, and we had a very reasonable doubt in our minds as to whether we were sailors "good and true." There was a long ocean voyage before us, and the few of us that were inclined to sing refrained from doing so lest it might be thought that, like the boy in the wood, we were making a great noise in order to keep our courage up.

We were one day late in leaving San Francisco, it having been originally planned to leave here on Saturday, November 17th, and this delay of one day served to cut short our visit at Honolulu.

The morning of our departure had dawned gray and sullen and rainy, but toward noon the clouds broke away and by two o'clock in the afternoon, the hour set for our departure, the day had become a fairly pleasant one.
At the wharf in San Francisco, a great crowd had assembled to wish us bon voyage, conspicuous among them being my paternal ancestor, who would have liked well enough to make the entire trip, and who would doubtless have done so could he have spared the necessary time from his business at Marshalltown.