And these boys have played base-ball there; baseball, which is the very symbol, the outward and visible expression of the drive and push and rush and struggle of the raging, tearing, booming nineteenth century.

One cannot realize it, the place and the fact are so incongruous; it is like interrupting a funeral with a circus.

Why, there's no legitimate point of contact, no possible kinship between base-ball" and the Sandwich Islands; base-ball is all fact, the Islands are all sentiment.

In base-ball you've got to do everything just right, or you don't get there; in the Islands you've got to do everything all wrong, or you can't stay there.

You do it wrong to get it right, for if you do it right you get it wrong; there isn't any way to get it right but to do it wrong, and the wronger you do it the righter it is.
"The natives illustrate this every day.