A solemn stranger met me in the suburbs the other day, and said: 

“Good morning, your reverence.  Preach in the stone church yonder, no doubt?”

“No, I don’t.  I’m not a preacher.”

“Really, I beg your pardon, Captain.  I trust you had a good season.  How much oil”—­

“Oil?  What do you take me for?  I’m not a whaler.”

“Oh, I beg a thousand pardons, your Excellency.

“Major General in the household troops, no doubt?  Minister of the Interior, likely?  Secretary of war?  First Gentleman of the Bed-chamber?  Commissioner of the Royal”—­

“Stuff!  I’m no official.  I’m not connected in any way with the Government.”

“Bless my life!  Then, who the mischief are you? what the mischief are you? and how the mischief did you get here, and where in thunder did you come from?”

“I’m only a private personage—­an unassuming stranger—­lately arrived from America.”

“No?  Not a missionary!  Not a whaler! not a member of his Majesty’s Government! not even Secretary of the Navy!  Ah, Heaven! it is too blissful to be true; alas, I do but dream.  And yet that noble, honest countenance—­those oblique, ingenuous eyes—­that massive head, incapable of—­of—­anything; your hand; give me your hand, bright waif.  Excuse these tears.  For sixteen weary years I have yearned for a moment like this, and”—­

Here his feelings were too much for him, and he swooned away.  I pitied this poor creature from the bottom of my heart.  I was deeply moved.  I shed a few tears on him and kissed him for his mother.  I then took what small change he had and “shoved”.

CHAPTER LXVII.

I still quote from my journal: 

I found the national Legislature to consist of half a dozen white men and some thirty or forty natives.  It was a dark assemblage.  The nobles and Ministers (about a dozen of them altogether) occupied the extreme left of the hall, with David Kalakaua (the King’s Chamberlain) and Prince William at the head.  The President of the Assembly, His Royal Highness M. Kekuanaoa, [Kekuanaoa is not of the blood royal.  He derives his princely rank from his wife, who was a daughter of Kamehameha the Great.  Under other monarchies the male line takes precedence of the female in tracing genealogies, but here the opposite is the case—­the female line takes precedence.  Their reason for this is exceedingly sensible, and I recommend it to the aristocracy of Europe:  They say it is easy to know who a man’s mother was, but, etc., etc.] and the Vice President (the latter a white man,) sat in the pulpit, if I may so term it.  The President is the King’s father.  He is an erect, strongly built, massive featured, white-haired, tawny old gentleman of eighty years of age or thereabouts.  He was simply but well dressed, in a blue cloth coat and white vest,