Dad could never get away from the sea, you know.

When I was fourteen I was Dad's actual housekeeper, with entire power over the servants, and I am very proud of that period of my life.

And when I was sixteen we three girls were all sent up to California to Mills Seminary, which was quite fashionable and stifling.
How we used to long for home! We didn't chum with the other girls, who called us little cannibals, just because we came from the Sandwich Islands, and who made invidious remarks about our ancestors banqueting on Captain Cook--which was historically untrue, and, besides, our ancestors hadn't lived in Hawaii.
"I was three years at Mills Seminary, with trips home, of course, and two years in New York; and then Dad went smash in a sugar plantation on Maui.
The report of the engineers had not been right.

Then Dad had built a railroad that was called 'Lackland's Folly,'-- it will pay ultimately, though.

But it contributed to the smash.