The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-01-28

A Hasty Pencil Sketch of the Ha-
Uaiiuu President

H. s. Garfield, i'll Chicago Times Herald.
The first thing about him is size The
President of the Hawaiian republic is six
feet two inches in height. He is about sixty
years of age, but he has not taken on flesh.
He is as trim as a man of thirty. lie is
admirably OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES
deep-chested. thin-flanked and long of limb.
One cannot help thinking in looking at him
that such bone and sinew were wasted on
the Supreme Bench. A weak man can sit
still and think well as another. Dole
would have made an ideal head for a
boarding party. Properly trained, he could
have attained international reputation in
the prize ring. He is, or rather has been, a
giant of a man. Twenty years ago his
strength must have been enormous. So far
as physics 60 he is not only the largest
living President he is the biggest Presi-
dent the world ever saw. Spare of flesh
as he is, he weighs more than two hun
dred pounds.
Those who knew him as boy, youth and
man tell many tales of his prowess. The
Kanakas of undiluted race are finely pro-
portioned and well grown, but Dole was
swifter of foot than any man on the islands.
He handled without effort weights that
others could not stir. AS a mountain climb
er he was unsurpassed. Like the natives
of the little group that lies lonely but
smiling in the heart of the Pacific, he was
as much at home in the water as on the
land. AS swimmer, diver and shark fight
er he held his own with the best of them.
His skill in aquatics made him remembered
at Williams College, massachusetts, for
many years. He was supreme judge of the
Hawaiian islands, but his former college
ma nd in
thought of him only a mighty swimmer,
runner climber, walker and fighter.
The old Puritans bred big. raw-boned.
hardy men, and Dole is of Puritan stock
undefiled. His ancestors lived down New
Bedford way. where they believe in Med
ford rum and true religion. He possesses
the more salient characteristics of the
Puritan stock, modified by long life spent
in an easier cline and amid an easier peo-
pie. He is direct, positive, earnest, person.
ally absteminous, grave of demeanor, with
little sense of humor. with tendency to
estimate observance above the thing OBJ
served. very straightforward. very moral,
very honest and very reVerent. He has lost
the Puritan desire to force others to his
way of thinking. He is not in any sense Il
missionary. or an evangelist or an exhOrter.
He is handsome man even now. Under
sized cynics say that aVoirdupois is always
more potent with the other sex than brain.
and there may be something in it. Dole had
both the size and the brain. His features
are regular and we'll nodded. His head is
rather long. but well shaped, his eyes are
SOFT luSlrOuS dark DfOWll. Iney are muc1
too soft for d man. Dole could never have
been the loving and Mechanically remorseful
Lancelot or the merriy testing Gawaine
or Tristan of the fiery heart and conscience
less desire: but he could have been Arthur.
who was handsome and good and, with il
all something of prig. 1t is Charles Reade
who in one of his lesser stories THE Jilt =
makes his heroine faithless, charmed from
her equpoise by magnificent beard which
belonged to a man who should not have won
her. When she came within the sphere of
influence of that torrent of hair she was
pOweress. DOle's beard is splendid. 1t is
silken and brown. slightly tinged with gray.
and pOurS over his breast in masses
With all of his personality, however. his
repcseful manner and suggestion of latent
force. one cannot talk to the Hawaiian
President without realizing that he was not.
is not and can never be the real leader of
the revolution and the forces which main
tain the present form of government He
has the judicial. not the active mind He
can plan, but is not of the kind which
executes. All of his previous life had I'M
fitted him TO be the man 20 strike the de-
ciSiVe blow. He was the son of school
teacher and was educated in this country.
where a respect for the established order of
things was ground into him. He was a
lawyer until called To the bench and was
on the bench until short time previous
10 Liliuokalani's overthrow. He was made
President because Of his lifelong reputation
Tor an unswervable rectitude. No man