The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1876-11-25

IN TIE spring time oil Its life the young tree
stands erect in strength and beauty; with the
summer It's branches grow stronger, it's flowers
brighter, and lite kindly shade broader autumn
comes with it's Indian summer, its dim and hay
skies, it's ripening fruits and it's sere and yellow
leaves. Not infrequently we hear expressions
of pity and commisseration for old age and it's
sere and yellow leaves; and yet, see those smae
leaves hanging upon the once green branches,
still beautiful when the glOries Of the setting
sun paint them in hues of golden and royal
purple, and bring into view the quaint marks
and cabalistic writing which the wood-nymphs
pencilled upon the delicate surfaces as histories
and memoranda of the past. The end comes
with the SHOWS of winter, and the beautiful
leaves of autumn fall to the ground. Many an
album is enriched by those bright things of
beauty, while the rest are gathered by the
eddying winds into quiet hooks and corners, that
from their midst the early crocus and fragrant
violet may spring forth. Such is the life of a
tree of beauty and such also is the life of a
good woman-of Lucy Goodale Thurston.
In the pleasant land Of her adoption, under
the skies Of a perpetual summer, the sere and
yellow leaves Of more than three score years and
ten long chung to the branches. AT the end,
many of those bright autumn leaves were
gathered into the keeping of generating and
loving hearts, while others have been swept into
the quiet hooks OF the history of Hawaii nei.
And it were without doubt an interesting task to
transcribo some of the records engraved upon the
autumn leaves of this good wOman's life, rich in
memories of the past. This task, we trust, will
ere-long be undertaken by some able pen. The
avants of the last aiehtv veors ware spread ont
before the eyes of this woman,-remarkable
among her sex for intellect, for keen observation,
for correct and masculine Judgment and decisive
ness of character-as an open page. Particu-
larly was this SO from the days when ffty-six
years ago she landed on these shores of a then
savage country-a country without gods and
without q religion-down to the days when, in
her cottage in the valley of Nuuanu, the sound
of the church going bells of o Christian land
fell sweetly upon her ear.
Doubtless the scenes and associations of her
childhood's home may have had much to do
with forming the peeuliarities of mind and tenn
permanent TO- which we have alluded. Born in
1795, in old Massachusetts, not very far from
Plymouth rock, among the grandchildren and
descendants of the stern old Puritans, it is no
wonder that her earliest childhood received the
indelible impress of that strong Christian faith
which in 1920 led the sturdy Pilgrims away
from their native land to the rock-bound shores
Of New England for the sake of /" freedom to
worship God" The story of the fathers, their
sufferings and privations for conscience sake,
were themes still too fresh in the days Of her
childhood to have lost their interest as subjects
of conversation at the evening fireside. When
i -. 60. - ill IV,ob.nHkao 1ioA ,I,a1
ing into mourning the young nation he had
founded. The second war with England found
her n maiden Of seventeen. America was then
but an infant giant she lived to see it gather
strength and grow to the full stature of the truly
Great Republic. During the first years of her
childhood France was in the midst of the horrors
of the revolution, and the guillotine ran red
with the blood of its victims. Then came the
meteor-like career of the first Napoleon, ending
with Waterloo, and when our missionary heroine
was embarking at Boston in 1919 for the spiritual
conquest of Hawaii, the great Emperor was
dying of ~vexation and disappointed ambition, a
prisoner Of England at st. Helena. George the
Ill. was King of England then. although he
died the year our first missionaries landed at
Kailua. Mrs. Thurston saw the reigns of three
Kings of Great Britain-two Georges and
William ", and thirty-seven years in the
reign of Queen Victoria. She was contemporary
with all the Presidents of the United States,
after the first, from Adams to Grant. During
her life time the discovery of the steam engine
has revolutionized the mechanic arts and the
electric telegraph has anniililated time and space.
And during the past eighty years. what a legion
of stars of the first magnitude have arisen and
shone in literature and science and the arts!