ON THE ONE HAND

   Salary of Chief Justice Cedarkrantz $500
   Salary of President Baron Senfft von Pilsach (about) 415
   Salary of Lieutenant Ulfsparre, Chief of Police 140
   Salary of Dr. Hagberg, Private Secretary to the Chief Justice 100

   Total monthly salary to four whites, one of them paid against His
   Majesty’s protest $1155

   ON THE OTHER HAND

   Total monthly payments to and for His Majesty the King, including
   allowance and hire of three clerks, one of these placed under the
   rubric of extraordinary expenses $95

This looks strange enough and mean enough already.  But we have ground of comparison in the practice of Brandeis.

   Brandeis, white prime minister $200
   Tamasese (about) 160
   White Chief of Police 100

Under Brandeis, in other words, the king received the second highest allowance on the sheet; and it was a good second, and the third was a bad third.  And it must be borne in mind that Tamasese himself was pointed and laughed at among natives.  Judge, then, what is muttered of Laupepa, housed in his shanty before the president’s doors like Lazarus before the doors of Dives; receiving not so much of his own taxes as the private secretary of the law officer; and (in actual salary) little more than half as much as his own chief of police.  It is known besides that he has protested in vain against the charge for Dr. Hagberg; it is known that he has himself applied for an advance and been refused.  Money is certainly a grave subject on Mulinuu; but respect costs nothing, and thrifty officials might have judged it wise to make up in extra politeness for what they curtailed of pomp or comfort.  One instance may suffice.  Laupepa appeared last summer on a public occasion; the president was there and not even the president rose to greet the entrance of the sovereign.  Since about the same period, besides, the monarch must be described as in a state of sequestration.  A white man, an Irishman, the true type of all that is most gallant, humorous, and reckless in his country, chose to visit His Majesty and give him some excellent advice (to make up his difference with Mataafa) couched unhappily in vivid and figurative language.  The adviser now sleeps in the Pacific, but the evil that he chanced to do lives after him.  His Majesty was greatly (and I must say justly) offended by the freedom of the expressions used; he appealed to his white advisers; and these, whether from want of thought or by design, issued an ignominious proclamation.  Intending visitors to the palace must appear before their consuls and justify their business.  The majesty of buried Samoa was henceforth only to be viewed (like a private collection) under special permit; and was thus at once cut off from the company and opinions of the self respecting.  To retain any dignity in such an abject state would require a man of very different virtues from those claimed by the not unvirtuous Laupepa.  He is not designed to ride the whirlwind or direct the storm, rather to be the ornament of private life.  He is kind, gentle, patient as Job, conspicuously well-intentioned, of charming manners; and when he pleases, he has one accomplishment in which he now begins to be alone—­I mean that he can pronounce correctly his own beautiful language.