Ka Leo o ka Lahui, Volume II, Number 166, 7 April 1891 — Page 4

KA LEO O KA LAHUI.

"E Mau ke Ea o ka Aina i ka Pono."

 

KING KALAKAUA.

            Now that all the fuss, the pomp and vanity is over, when every one was willing to vie with one another in displaying their grief for His late Majesty Kalakaua, it is a pleasure to us to note a contribution in memorium of our late King, in kind and appreciative language of the good qualities  which he possessed. Too many of us who were benefitted and made wealthy through his efforts have already forgotten him, such is the perverted nature of man that we rarely remember that we owe our present prosperity and civilization to those who have done their share of the world’s work and gone on into the unknown rather than to our own exertions.

 

            To the Editor of The Evening Post:

            Sir: In justice to the memory of one who, apparently, has no one else in America to speak for him, will you kindly allow one who was called to minister to the late King of Hawaii in his last hours, and who saw much of the royal party at the time, to tell your readers of some of the most Christian deeds and characteristics of this remarkable man, whose ancestors only four-score years ago were heathen men and anthropohagi?

            The King was a member of the English Church and a regular communicant thereof. Contrary to the practice of the average American abroad, he never failed, during his recent visit to this country, to attend some place of worship on each return of the Lord’s day. His first Sunday on these shores saw him worshipping in “Old Trinity,” San Francisco, and an humble communicant before the altar. Shortly after, on the 25th day of December last, the rector received a note from the Chamberlain of the court, which read thus: “His Majesty desires to attend Christmas service at Trinity Church this morning. Will you kindly arrange a pew for the party?”

            At home his late Majesty paid equal honor to the first day of the week. On the occasion of the last anniversary of his birth, which fell on a Sunday, he refused to allow the public demonstrations to begin until Monday, and urged the dedication of the day to prayer and charity for the lepers, for which noble action the Bishop of Honolulu thanked him in a letter, which I have been allowed to see. I have also his Lordship’s sermon before me as I write. Every Sunday afternoon too, the King was wont to summon to the palace a choir from one of the native congregations for an hour of singing and prayer.

            His Majesty was ever greatly concerned for the lepers of his kingdom, and quite recently chartered a vessel for a visit to Molokai, where he selected a site for the monument to be erected to the memory of Father Damien, and cheered the settlement by his kind and loving words. Nothing was dearer to his heart than the Christianization of his people, and his private subscriptions for the new churches for their accommodation ran up among the thousands.

            One who has known of their private life speaks of the King and Queen as dignified, yet kind and generous, always looking out for the interests of their people antagonizing only those who would bar their way and keep them from the encouragement of native talent. No one who was witnessed her faithful vigil will ever forget Kalua, the handmaiden of his Majesty, who, worshipping him as the King of her adopted home and the royal patron whose generous care had transformed the slave into the cultured and gracious women, clung to him in his last hours with the loving tenderness of a child for its father. And she is only one of a great multitude of the forgotten classes for whom his sympathies were aroused, and to whom the royal patronage and purse were continually extended. No one, no matter how poor or friendless, ever applied in vain for help and recognition; and the lovely island kingdom in the Pacific must be a veritable house of mourning to-day because of the absence of him whose heart felt the miseries of the struggling children of poverty and genius.

            I have @ also from one well acquainted with the couple that his Majesty was always very thougtful of the wishes and projects of the Queen; and, from a personal inspection of the correspondence, I know how he entered into the pious and charitable schemes of the household, and his intense interest in the Bible classes and eleemosynary institutions of his consort and the Princess.

            He was a composer of considerable merit, a fine musician, master of languages. The sad music of the band that fell upon the evening air, as his body was lowered to the deck of the Charleston , on 22d of January last, was a favorite melody that he had given to the world. It is also a well-established fact, I believe, that, unless official duties or court etiquette required his attendance, nothing was allowed to interfere with his allotted hours of study; and it has been affirmed by his intimates, that he was familiar with the contents of every book in his magnificent library.

            The heat of the southern sun was in his veins, and yet it is universally conceded on this side of the continent, where he was well known, that he was one of the most forgiving of men, never bearing a grudge, and always generous towards his traducers. He was a King, and yet a true and gracious friend. Heredity was all against him, and yet he developed traits and qualities that are not always seen in the modern representatives of Constantine or Alfred the Great.

            He was superstitious, it is said. Were the Anglo-Saxons sapient and sensible in their religious beliefs seventy-five years after their discovery of the vanity of Thor and Odin? He was not a holy man. I have heard it murmured. How many of the profession Christians of America are noted for their purity and truth? What proportion of the foreign Christian population of Hawaii are free from lust, rapacity, and fraud?

            The last mail from Honolulu brought me two letters from the royal family. In one the Queen Dowager @eares me to express her deep sense of gratitude to the people of America for their generous treatment of her dead lord, and to say for her that the kindness of the citizens of the United States, its Government, and officials will never be forgotten by my (her) people.” “We were preparing,” she further says, to receive the King in better health tan when he left us, but this was not the will of our father in Heaven. It helps us to bear the stroke when we remember that he died among friends although far away from us, in a foreign land. And we take comfort in knowing that, if he had been conscious of what was doing around him, nothing would have been more soothing to his departing spirit than to be aware of your ministrations as the representative of the Christian communion in which he long ago cast his lot.” In the other letter, autograph of some seven pages from the Queen Regnant, a similar-reference is made to the courtesy and attention of our country, and she goes on to stay: “If anything can mitigate our grief apart from the consolation of the Word of Life, it is the evidence we have of the extreme good friendship shown our late brother in the United States as the living guest of your friendly county, and the more than fraternal devotion exhibited in efforts to prolong his life, and, when these failed, the honors bestowed on his body and his memory.”

            To say that this man had weaknesses is to say that he was human. To say that he had virtues and graces, was cultured, refined charitable, generous, sympathetic, a believer in prayer and sacraments, is to say that he knew something is to say that he knew something of the struggles and the victories of heroic spirits. J. Sanders Reed, Rector of Trinity Church. San Francisco, March 3

Repeating Slanders.

            A few days ago the P. C. Advertiser took the Elele to task for reproducing in its columns an article from a New York paper which it was admitted on all hands was an outrageous slander on the Kingdom. We might now turn the Advertiser’s question on itself in relation to the S. F. Chronicle articles quoted by Mr. Lionel Stagge, and ask; “why give these unsavory productions a new lease of life?” We are bound to be believe Mr. Stagge’s disclaimer as to his being the author of the objectionable letter from here, which appeared in the Chronicle of March 18. Nor can we for a moment believe that it was written by, or through the agency of any of the editorial staff of any local newspaper. There is a suspicion that the transducer correspondent of the Chronicle is not a recent arrival by any means, but is a well known “sorehead” who could neither lead nor drive his party, and his fulsome laudat on of the “high ancestry” of his new found patron, and assertion that the hope of continued peace lies in the fact that “the native party has split into two hostile camps” is alone sufficient to indicate the writer.

            Mr. Lionel Stagge is entitled to the credict of his own repudiation as the writer, and he is not bound to go outside of that and say that he has not rubbed elbows daily with the actual writer.

            The prime mover in if not the originator of the still-born “Liberal party” which could not muster forty electors at its attempted inauguration last week, and who in conjunction with the man of “high ancestry” is vainly trying to divide the National Reform Party, is too plainly figured @ as the Chronicle false prophet who declared “that the native party has split”

 

Japanese Immigration.

Article I.

            The Bulletin of last Saturday contains a lengthy article on Japanese Immigration, purporting “to be useful as well as interesting on this occasion, while the Board of Immigration is distributing these people, to sketch in view the facts relating to Japanese Immigration.” The article is chiefly remarkable for what it does not say on the subject. There is a careful abstinence from any discussion of the policy of filing the country up with Asiatics. Every school boy knows what the writer tells us as news, “that the labor required from time to time for replenishing the market should be sought of diverse nationalities.” The italics to market are ours, and should be prefixed with the words “human chattel.”

 

            The Bulletin of course tunes its fiddle to suit its contract-labor holding owners, and no one has a right to find fault with it for so doing. We never did believe in keeping a dog and having to bark ourselves. the “paternal oversight of the Japanese government and the patient study of Hawaiian employers as pathetically put by the Bulletin man, is really touching—or it would be, if it was not positively nauseous. “The present status of the matter is creditable to the Hawaiian employers of the Japanese, for patiently studying the peculiar habits of the people, then trying to adopt the economics of sugar production to the Japanese predilections.” What humbug! If this is not the very poetry of grovel , then we never saw Jenkins on his knees to the big boss .

 

            Then follows an extract from the report of Mr. G. O. Nacayama, Inspector-in-Chief of Japanese Immigration, who receives out of the general revenue of this country the paltry pittance of $6,000 every two years, for representing that everything is lovely, and “that during the last two years there has been no considerable trouble between the planters and their Japanese laborers,” and we will here take the liberty to print a little more from this gentleman’s report—not found in the Bulletin —to show how anxious this employer of the Board of Immigration is to please his employers by making matters more snug for them and rough on his countrymen :--“There have been frequent complaints of desertions since the last year, which at one time amounted to some one hundred cases, but owing to the combined efforts of the planters not to employ any Japanese without a certificate of his contract cancelled or expired, and on our part owing to the employment of special policeman for that purpose, how have already since last November, there seems to have been a good check made against any further increase of the same evil.

            “While such efforts on the part of the planters and policeman are greatly hoped to be continued . I would suggest that the coming Legislature change the law so as to make the act of deserting by contract laborers entirely more heavily punishable .”

            We are given to understand Mr. Nacayama handed the plans and specifications of a genuine “Bastinado Act” to the Hon. H. P. Baldwin for passage into law, but that gentleman declined any connexion with the “Jama Act” as posterity would probably designate it, and it fell through. However the Bulletin has hardly treated this zealous official fairly in hiding his meritorious zeal under a bushel, we hope his salary will be raised an extra thousand next session, and that his Bastinado act will be administered by himself in public. But never forget that deep down in our National shoes, we have patriotic, soul stirring mottoes:--“Hail Columbia”—“Rule Brittania,” “Rueit Sellum,” “Nox Vomica,” “All men are free and equal,” and one or two more.

 

ON DIT.

            That Prince Rienzi Orloff has six detectives in his employ.

            That General Ashford is still the hero of foreign commentators.

            That owing to the honest vigilance of Port Surveyor Tripp, opium has advance to $200,00 a ten.

            That in consequence of the rise of the price of opium, indulgences are allowed the saints for smuggling not over one ten of the article to each person, on condition that the increase shall be tithed for the church.

            That the Hawaiian Court is getting more fashionable: it has its scandle and scandle-mongers.

            That the maids of honor and the honors of maids have received a coat of coal-tar lately.

            That morality is in high life regulated by the code of Catherine of Russia. So say our San Francisco correspondents.

            That changes, physiological, social and political will take place with the change of the moon.

            That the native Press has been muzzled by the old religion-hypocritico-politico-reformio party, except the KA LEO, which stands in the interest of all.

            That the Bulletin treated the Wodehouse wedding as an insignificant affair, but reveled in elegant description over the Lishman wedding. How fickle is popularity in society.

 

Olelo Hoolaha.

            Ke hai ia aku nei ka lohe ia na kanaka a pau, o ka poe e makemake ana ia mau eke paakai a me ona nanahu kie we maikai a makepono no hoi ke kumukuai, e loaa no au ma Haimoeipo, Hale Kaa o ka Moi, a i ole i ko’u home paha. MRS. C. I. HAIRAM. Haimoeipo, Honolulu, Oct. 8, 1890. 3me—d

 

Olelo Hoolaha.

            Mai keia la a mau loa aku, aole loa au e hookaa i kekahi aie i hoopaa ia ma ko’u inoa, ke ole e loaa kekahi ae ana ia kakau ia e a’u. MJAES H. KAPAHU. Aleamai, Hilo, March 9, 1891. 43 w3te.