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116  HONOLULU  We are very comfortable. Have everything we need. To be sure the carpet is old, the chairs are old, the crockery old, the horse and carriage old, every thing old, but comfortable and all compare with the old old folks. Fanny Gulick, 1873 The Gulicks moved to the outskirts of Honolulu, Hawai‘i’s capital, in 1856, and they lived there for the next eighteen years. During that time, Honolulu expanded rapidly, and today it encompasses the site where the Gulicks built their house. When the house was built, however, it lay two miles outside of Honolulu in an area called Makiki, which was separated from the capital by the Kalaokahua Plain. The plain was “desolate, almost naked” in 1856, but Peter predicted that it would soon be covered by the inhabitants of Honolulu , because he could see the community growing. “It is getting to be a beautiful village,” he wrote, “& seems to extend two or three miles up Nuuanu. There are also many neat framed houses in Manoa Valley East, & in Kalihi, west of Honolulu.” Peter thought that Honolulu was destined to become “an important place,” but he regretted that it had gone for some time without “a powerful revival of religion.” This absence of religiosity troubled him, and it also troubled Fanny, who doubted that Honolulu’s former missionary, Hiram Bingham, would approve of its newfound secularism. If he came back from his retirement in Connecticut, she wrote, he would find that Hawai‘i’s capital harbored “a worldly set.” Honolulu may have been worldly, but it was not worldly enough for the Gulicks’ son Thomas. As a teenager, he yearned to see the world, and he complained that everything in Hawai‘i was boringly provincial. “For all that is said about our splendid luxurious tropical climate and these isles being the gems of the Pacific,” he wrote in 1857, “I do not believe they are to be compared in verdure even, with rocky sterile barren New England. For all our bragging we have no green meadows, no trees, no birds. No beautiful lakes, winding rivers, quiet villages, no facilities for traveling, no place to go to. No Honolulu 117 museums, painting galleries, steamboats, railroad cars, libraries, great speakers , etc. etc. etc. etc.” Thomas’s complaints failed to elicit much sympathy from Peter, who felt that the privations of life in Hawai‘i were offset to a large degree by the nation ’s scenery. Replete with beaches, mountains, and waterfalls, Hawai‘i’s scenery enchanted Peter, and he particularly enjoyed the landscape around his family’s new house. Behind the house was the lovely Makiki Stream, and from the verandah that partially encircled the house Peter enjoyed his view. “The fields, & hills look beautiful, all around us,” he wrote, comparing the nearby hills to the ones in Psalm 121. Another thing that Peter liked about his house was its proximity to Punahou . The house was a seven-minute walk from the school, and it was located on Punahou Road. Today the road is called Punahou Street, and the site of the Gulicks’ house is occupied by Honolulu’s Christian Science Church, which was constructed with stones from a boundary wall the Gulicks built. Within the wall the Gulicks gardened extensively, planting sorghum for horses, vegetables, flowers, and banana and tamarind trees, some of which still stand. As the foliage around his house blossomed, Peter expressed satisfaction. “Our new place is getting to look pleasant,” he wrote, and Fanny concurred, describing her family’s new house as far better than its predecessors. Most of them had been cramped adobe structures, but the new house was a spacious two-story wooden building with a verandah, and Fanny liked the attention it attracted. “All who have spoken of it say it stands high and appears quite imposing ,” she reported, and she wrote enthusiastically about the house’s amenities . These included a piano, Brussels carpet, fancy wallpaper, an “airy parlor ,” and “spacious bedrooms,” all of which Fanny thought would raise the spirits of visiting missionaries, who in her words had “few comforts among the heathen.” The Gulicks hired two Hawaiian boys to help keep their new house clean and tidy. One of the boys proved to be “ugly and saucy,” however, and he was soon dismissed. As a result, Fanny was overburdened with domestic chores, and in September 1856 she complained about feeling fatigued. Yet she maintained that her family’s new locale, Makiki, was in many ways better than Wai...

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