Roughing It by Mark Twain

a million dollars of public money a year, sends in his annual “budget”

with great ceremony, talks prodigiously of “finance,” suggests imposing

schemes for paying off the “national debt” (of $150,000,) and does it all

for $4,000 a year and unimaginable glory.

Next we have his Excellency the Minister of War, who holds sway over the

royal armies–they consist of two hundred and thirty uniformed Kanakas,

mostly Brigadier Generals, and if the country ever gets into trouble with

a foreign power we shall probably hear from them. I knew an American

whose copper-plate visiting card bore this impressive legend:

“Lieutenant-Colonel in the Royal Infantry. To say that he was proud of

this distinction is stating it but tamely. The Minister of War has also

in his charge some venerable swivels on Punch-Bowl Hill wherewith royal

salutes are fired when foreign vessels of war enter the port.

Next comes his Excellency the Minister of the Navy–a nabob who rules the

“royal fleet,” (a steam-tug and a sixty-ton schooner.)

And next comes his Grace the Lord Bishop of Honolulu, the chief dignitary

of the “Established Church”–for when the American Presbyterian

missionaries had completed the reduction of the nation to a compact

condition of Christianity, native royalty stepped in and erected the

grand dignity of an “Established (Episcopal) Church” over it, and

imported a cheap ready-made Bishop from England to take charge. The

chagrin of the missionaries has never been comprehensively expressed, to

this day, profanity not being admissible.

Next comes his Excellency the Minister of Public Instruction.

Next, their Excellencies the Governors of Oahu, Hawaii, etc., and after

them a string of High Sheriffs and other small fry too numerous for

computation.

Then there are their Excellencies the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister

Plenipotentiary of his Imperial Majesty the Emperor of the French; her

British Majesty’s Minister; the Minister Resident, of the United States;

and some six or eight representatives of other foreign nations, all with

sounding titles, imposing dignity and prodigious but economical state.

Imagine all this grandeur in a play-house “kingdom” whose population

falls absolutely short of sixty thousand souls!

The people are so accustomed to nine-jointed titles and colossal magnates

that a foreign prince makes very little more stir in Honolulu than a

Western Congressman does in New York.

And let it be borne in mind that there is a strictly defined “court

costume” of so “stunning” a nature that it would make the clown in a

circus look tame and commonplace by comparison; and each Hawaiian

official dignitary has a gorgeous vari-colored, gold-laced uniform

peculiar to his office–no two of them are alike, and it is hard to tell

which one is the “loudest.” The King had a “drawing-room” at stated

intervals, like other monarchs, and when these varied uniforms congregate

there–weak-eyed people have to contemplate the spectacle through smoked

glass. Is there not a gratifying contrast between this latter-day

exhibition and the one the ancestors of some of these magnates afforded

the missionaries the Sunday after the old-time distribution of clothing?

Behold what religion and civilization have wrought!

CHAPTER LXVIII.

While I was in Honolulu I witnessed the ceremonious funeral of the King’s

sister, her Royal Highness the Princess Victoria. According to the royal

custom, the remains had lain in state at the palace thirty days, watched

day and night by a guard of honor. And during all that time a great

multitude of natives from the several islands had kept the palace grounds

well crowded and had made the place a pandemonium every night with their

howlings and wailings, beating of tom-toms and dancing of the (at other

times) forbidden “hula-hula” by half-clad maidens to the music of songs

of questionable decency chanted in honor of the deceased. The printed

programme of the funeral procession interested me at the time; and after

what I have just said of Hawaiian grandiloquence in the matter of

“playing empire,” I am persuaded that a perusal of it may interest the

reader:

After reading the long list of dignitaries, etc., and remembering

the sparseness of the population, one is almost inclined to wonder

where the material for that portion of the procession devoted to

“Hawaiian Population Generally” is going to be procured: