The sun was pouring down in veritable splutters of softness and mellowness. It was warm in an all-embracing tenderness of warmth. To be in the shade with another human being was here as unifying in spirit as sitting before an open fire is on a blizzardy day in the North. And on such a day I entered the court-room of Honolulu. The dusty tread of people from every land has sounded across this court-house floor and all the simple tragedies of life with their hoarse warnings have been enacted within its walls. Hundreds of disappointed men and women have come into that room hoping to have their lives straightened out, their affections given a new chance.
BEAUTY IS MORE THAN SKIN-DEEP
In these two cases it obviously goes back to their Hawaiian and European blood
When I entered, the court-room was empty. A massive Hawaiian looked in, and walked away. Then a thin white man approached and, when he learned what brought me, he sat down on one of the wooden benches to talk to me. It was Judge William L. Whitney, who died in New York just recently.
Presently, an emaciated-looking Chinese entered and sat down to wait. A small, wrinkled, sallow little woman from the Celestial Republic, accompanied by a compatriot, came in after him, and seated herself a little distance away. Then came the fat Hawaiian again who had peered in earlier, and with that everything seemed in order. Judge Whitney left me, approached the bench, and, though he wore only his ordinary street clothes, he was forthwith crowned with the halo of his office.
The proceedings began. Proceedings in this case meant great round eyes rolling in tremendous sockets, a tongue free with the dialects and linguistics of every mixture, and a temperament free from ambition or guile. The judge could speak no Chinese, the respondents could speak no English, the witnesses (of whom two strayed in later) could speak neither English nor Chinese,—and so among them the Hawaiian interpreter had all the fun to himself. He was in reality the dispenser of justice.
The case was rehearsed. The Chinese was suing his wife for divorce.
"Where were you when you saw this man kiss your wife?" asked the judge.
The interpreter took up the question in Chinese as though the language were part of his inheritance, and after the Chinese spoke, back came the reply through the lips of the Hawaiian, but in the first person.