Hawaii — page 117: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

108 LILIUVOKALANI AND THE REVOLUTION. brought in, and meekly explained that the telegram read, ‘Prepare a lunch of sandwiches for the King.’ ” Kalakaua was in no way related to the royal family of Kamehameha’s; he was only a high chief, and was re- puted to be the illegitimate son of a negro cobbler, who had gone to the Hawaiian Islands from Boston. Before he assumed the throne, he was a police court attorney, and was chosen by the Legislature, supported by the American residents. The King drank and gambled inordinately. He was superstitious, corrupt and sensual, and his principal ad- viser was an unscrupulous ex-Mormon missionary. Mr. Lucien Young says that “as late as 1890 the King came out upon a dais, stripped to the skin, and in the presence of several hundred pagans, at a secluded place near Honolulu, fully proved himself an adept in all the filthy performances required by his native followers— performances that, if described, would cause a shade to pass over the cheek of the most depraved frequenter of the slums of Gotham.” Kalakaua’s favorite pastime was to witness the hula dance, and he kept a dancing troupe of his own, for his amusement, as well as that of his friends. This dance was very vulgar, and is now chiefly carried on in secrecy. The strong and athletic constitution of the King broke down under his excessive dissipations, and seeking to re- gain his health, he went to California, but died at the Pal- — ace Hotel, San Francisco, January 2oth, 1891. Nine days after his remains were brought:to Honolulu, cComicbooks.co