Chapter 32

The man with a new idea is a Crank until the idea succeeds.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

It was Junior England all the way to Christchurch--in fact, just a
garden. And Christchurch is an English town, with an English-park annex,
and a winding English brook just like the Avon--and named the Avon; but
from a man, not from Shakespeare's river. Its grassy banks are bordered
by the stateliest and most impressive weeping willows to be found in the
world, I suppose. They continue the line of a great ancestor; they were
grown from sprouts of the willow that sheltered Napoleon's grave in St.
Helena. It is a settled old community, with all the serenities, the
graces, the conveniences, and the comforts of the ideal home-life. If it
had an established Church and social inequality it would be England over
again with hardly a lack.

In the museum we saw many curious and interesting things; among others a
fine native house of the olden time, with all the details true to the
facts, and the showy colors right and in their proper places. All the
details: the fine mats and rugs and things; the elaborate and wonderful
wood carvings--wonderful, surely, considering who did them wonderful in
design and particularly in execution, for they were done with admirable
sharpness and exactness, and yet with no better tools than flint and jade
and shell could furnish; and the totem-posts were there, ancestor above
ancestor, with tongues protruded and hands clasped comfortably over
bellies containing other people's ancestors--grotesque and ugly devils,
every one, but lovingly carved, and ably; and the stuffed natives were
present, in their proper places, and looking as natural as life; and the
housekeeping utensils were there, too, and close at hand the carved and
finely ornamented war canoe.

And we saw little jade gods, to hang around the neck--not everybody's,
but sacred to the necks of natives of rank. Also jade weapons, and many
kinds of jade trinkets--all made out of that excessively hard stone
without the help of any tool of iron. And some of these things had small
round holes bored through them--nobody knows how it was done; a mystery,
a lost art. I think it was said that if you want such a hole bored in a
piece of jade now, you must send it to London or Amsterdam where the
lapidaries are.

Also we saw a complete skeleton of the giant Moa. It stood ten feet
high, and must have been a sight to look at when it was a living bird.
It was a kicker, like the ostrich; in fight it did not use its beak, but
its foot. It must have been a convincing kind of kick. If a person had
his back to the bird and did not see who it was that did it, he would
think he had been kicked by a wind-mill.

There must have been a