A TWO SIDED CASE.

DR. TALMAGE INVESTIGATES THE TROUBLE IN HAWAII.

The American Traveler Also Enjoys the Hospitality of the Ex-Queen and the New President—The Wife of the Latter a Most Delightful and Talented Lady.

[Copyright, Louis Kiopesch, 1894.]

Honolulu, June 18.—The chamberlain, come to invite us to the residence of the ex-queen, had suggested 11 o’clock that morning as the best hour for our visit. We approached the wide open doors through a yard of palm trees and bananas and cocoanut, and amid flowers that dyed the yard with all the colors that a tropical sun can paint. We were ushered into the royal lady’s reception room, where, surrounded by a group of distinguished persons, she arose to greet us with a cordial grasp of the hand. The pictures of her hardly convey an accurate idea of her dignity of bearing. She has all the ease of one born to high position. Her political mis-…

EX-QUEEN LILIUOKALANI.

fortunes seem in nowise to have saddened her. She spoke freely of the brightness of life to any one disposed to meet all obligations, and at my suggestion that we found in life chiefly what we look for, and if we look for flowers we find flowers, and if we look for thorns we find thorns, she remarked: “I have found in the path of life chiefly flowers. I do not see how any one surrounded by as many blessings as many of us possess could be so ungrateful as to complain.” She said it was something to be remembered thankfully that for 50 years there was no revolution in the islands. She has full faith that the provisional government is only a temporary affair, and that she will again occupy the throne.

She asked her servant to show me, as something I had not seen before, a royal adornment made up from the small bird with a large name—the Melithreptes pacifica [mamo; Drepanis pacifica]. This bird, I had read, had under its wing a single feather of very exquisite color. The queen corrected my information by saying that it was not a single feather, but a tuft of feathers from under the wing of the bird from which the adornment was fashioned into a chain of beauty for the neck. She spoke of her visit to New York, but said that prolonged illness hindered her from seeing much of the city. She talked freely and intelligently on many subjects pertaining to the present and the future.

I was delighted with her appearance and manner and do not believe one word of the wretched stuff that has been written concerning her immoralities. Defamation is so easy, and there is so much cynicism aboard, which would rather believe evil than good, that it is not to be thought strange that this queen, like all the other rulers of the earth, has been beaten with storms of obloquy and misrepresentation. George Washington was called by Tom Paine a lying impostor. Thomas Jefferson was styled an infidel, and since those times we are said to have had in the United States presidency a bloodthirsty man, a drunkard and at least two libertines, and if anybody in prominent place and effective work has escaped “let him speak, for him have I offended.” After an exchange of autographs on that day in Honolulu we parted. Continue reading →