(Excerpt from Atolls of the Sun
I am not a scientist or s...)
Excerpt from Atolls of the Sun
I am not a scientist or scholar, and can relate only what I saw and heard, felt and imagined, in my dwell ing with savage and singular races among the wonder ful lagoons of the coral atolls, and poignant valleys of disregarded islands.
If I can make my reader see and feel the sad and beautiful guises of life in them, and the secrets of a few unusual souls, I shall be satisfied. The thrills of adventure upon the sea and in the shadowy glens, the odors of rare and sweet flowers, the memories of lov able humans, are here written to keep them alive in my heart, and to share them with my friends.
Life is not real. It is an illusion, a screen upon which each one writes the reactions upon himself of his sensory knowledge. The individual is the moving camera, and what he calls life is his projection of the panorama about him - not more actual than the figures and storms upon the cinema screen. In this book I have put the film that passed through my mind in wild places, and among natural people.
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(First Saturday in Frederick, Maryland. A time and place n...)
First Saturday in Frederick, Maryland. A time and place not where anything can happen but does happen. Join twelve writers as they reveal the hidden stories of seemingly ordinary people and things whose lives intersect in downtown Frederick, Maryland: A woman with a peculiar necklace hides a secret in its stones; a group of young airmen ponder relationships and escape routes; a new driver tests her mettle behind the wheel of an old station wagon; a lost cat evades death; a lost dog may lead his owner to it; a young girl follows a ghostly melody; Karma is dispatched on a mission; travelers arrive from another time; visitors come from another world. Chances are you've crossed paths with such strangers and have never borne them much thought before. Perhaps now, you will.
(White Shadows in the South Seas by Frederick O'Brien Fare...)
White Shadows in the South Seas by Frederick O'Brien Farewell to Papeite beach; at sea in the Morning Star; Darwin's theory of the continent that sank beneath the waters of the South Seas. By the white coral wall of Papeite beach the schooner Fetia Taiao (Morning Star) lay ready to put to sea. Beneath the skyward-sweeping green heights of Tahiti the narrow shore was a mass of colored gowns, dark faces, slender waving arms. All Papeite, flower-crowned and weeping, was gathered beside the blue lagoon. Lamentation and wailing followed the brown sailors as they came over the side and slowly began to cast the moorings that held the Morning Star. Few are the ships that sail many seasons among the Dangerous Islands. They lay their bones on rock or reef or sink in the deep, and the lovers, sons and husbands of the women who weep on the beach return no more to the huts in the cocoanut groves. So, at each sailing on the “long course” the anguish is keen. “Ia ora na i te Atua! Farewell and God keep you!” the women cried as they stood beside the half-buried cannon that serve to make fast the ships by the coral bank. From the deck of the nearby Hinano came the music of an accordeon and a chorus of familiar words: “I teie nie mahana Ne tere no oe e Hati Na te Moana!” “Let us sing and make merry, For we journey over the sea!” It was the Himene Tatou Arearea. Kelly, the wandering I.W.W., self-acclaimed delegate of the mythical Union of Beach-combers and Stowaways, was at the valves of the accordeon, and about him squatted a ring of joyous natives. “Wela ka hao! Hot stuff!” they shouted. We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.
Frederick O'Brien was a writer, journalist, and picturesque adventurer.
Background
Frederick O'Brien was born on June 16, 1869, in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, the son of William James and Catherine (McCarthy) O'Brien, and a grandson of an Irish immigrant, John O'Brien, who settled in Baltimore in 1820. His father was a lawyer and a Democrat in the national House of Representatives from 1873 to 1877, and in his later years a judge of the city orphans' court. He died in 1905 a highly regarded citizen and magistrate. Of his four sons two had respectable, commonplace careers in business and law, and a third became a Jesuit and a monsignor, but in Frederick the conventional middle-class pattern was crossed with a thread of waywardness.
Education
After a few years at Loyola College (1882-1885), where Frederick O'Brien read Herman Melville to more effect than the prescribed books, he dropped out to travel. He spent 1887 exploring Venezuela and Brazil by foot, and worked in mines in Trinidad. Returning home, he attempted and quit studying law.
Career
When the study of law grew unbearably irksome, Frederick O'Brian went to Liverpool on a cattle-boat, got back to the United States on a freighter, and until 1894 was a hobo and casual laborer.
Then he reported for the Marion "Mirror", at $8. 00 a week, but soon went over to its rival, Warren Gamaliel Harding's "Star", at $9. 00 a week. For the next twenty-five years, with respites devoted to globe-trotting, he was a newspaperman, likeable, competent, but hardly distinguished. After serving various papers in New York and San Francisco, he was news editor of the Honolulu "Advertiser" (1900-1901); editor and publisher of the Manila "Cablenews" (1902-09); and manager of the Riverside "Enterprise" and the Oxnard "Courier" (1910-1913).
Later O'Brien traveled among the islands of the South Seas. He returned, however, in wartime, was connected with the California railroad commission and the United States food administration, edited the Manilla "Times" for a few months after the Armistice, and then set out on his second trip around the globe.
O'Brien's first book, "White Shadows in the South Seas" (1919), was an account of his sojourn in the valley of Atuona, on Hivaoa, in the Marquesas. It was published just in time to strike what was virtually a new reading public, weary of war and of the discipline of military life, baffled by the complexities of contemporary society, and eager to escape, in imagination, to the only half-ruined paradise of O'Brien's romantic narrative. The astounding success of "White Shadows" called forth a number of imitators, helped to revive interest in the work of Herman Melville, Charles Warren Stoddard, and Robert Louis Stevenson, and ensured a ready market for O'Brien's subsequent books, magazine articles, and lectures.
"Mystic Isles of the South Seas" (1921) dealt with his travels and experiences on Tahiti and Moorea, and "Atolls of the Sun" (1922) with Paumotu or the Low Archipelago. Like the earlier work, they were written in fluent journalese, showed marked sympathy not only for the native races but for individual natives, and were well laden with anecdote and adventure and a tolerant attitude toward the world in general.
O'Brien himself lived the last years of his life at Sausalito on San Francisco Bay. He died of a heart ailment, after an illness of six months. His body was cremated, with none of his relatives present, and the ashes strewn on the ocean.
Achievements
Frederick O'Brian wrote to a number of newspapers: the Marion "Mirror", Warren Gamaliel Harding's "Star", Honolulu "Advertiser", the Manila "Cablenews", the Riverside "Enterprise" and the Oxnard "Courier", the Manilla "Times", etc.
O'Brian's most famous books are: "White Shadows in the South Seas" (1919), "Mystic Isles of the South Seas" (1921), "Atolls of the Sun" (1922), etc.
Genial, unpretentious, and reticent about himself, Frederick O'Brien had friends throughout the world, but perhaps no intimates.
Connections
Frederick had been married to Gertrude (May 26, 1897), daughter of Wakefield Gale Frye of Belfast, Maine. They had no children and ultimately separated.
Father:
William James O'Brien
lawyer
Mother:
Catherine (McCarthy) O'Brien
Grandfather:
John O'Brien
He was an Irish immigrant, who settled in Baltimore in 1820.
