TRAVELLED THE OCEAN BECAUSE OF ALOHA FOR HER FRIEND

There was the shocking news spread about on the morning of Tuesday last week about the streetcar accident, and then on the night of the following Monday like a flash of lightning there came sad news of the passing of Malie Kamakaea at Queen’s Hospital due to her injuries.

When the news spread across the width and breadth of the land and arrived before a tiny girl, a beloved friend of Malie Kamakaea, who lives on Kauai, the girl just left her home, her family and and everyone, and she travelled across the sea to see the cold body of her friend who left her and their schoolmates in this world behind.

The name of this tiny girl is Alice Charman, and she is only nine years old. When her older sisters told her of the passing of her beloved friend from this world, she immediately prepared herself to leave her home and went to the place to board the Kinau, and travelled across the sea all by herself for Honolulu.

When the steamship Kinau docked at the harbor, and while the crowd of people watching over the cold body of Malie Kamakaea and the family were relaxing at the funeral home of Mr. Silva, the sea-travelling child, Miss Alice Charman, arrived to see the cold body of her friend who she shared aloha with over the many days they attended school together.

In her hand she held a beautiful lei woven with flowers of the Garden Isle, woven over leaves of ama’u fern, and this became something appreciated by all; the circumstances of it’s fashioning was something they’d remember always.

It was the love of a friend that caused the trip over the wide ocean; distance is of no matter when summoned by tears.

(Kuokoa, 1/26/1912, p. 4)

Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, Buke XLVIII, Helu 4, Aoao 4. Ianuari 26, 1912.