The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1899-01-26
Reads a Paper On Mission Work
in Hawaii Mel.
ONE COUNTY'S CONTRIBUTION
Pioneers From the Vicinity of War
rem, Mass-Ffforts of a Party
of EIght-Result of Labors.

paper read by Rev. w. B. Oleson,
formerly principal of Kamehameha
School here. before a historical society
at Warren, Mass, and published in the
Warren HeraldD
In Dakota billiards, men out in the
binding storm have thought them
selves far from home when they were
actually wandering about in their own
doOryard. 1t is always happy cir
cumstance when a man comes to his
senses and realize that he is really at
home. 1t is a specially happy circum-
stance when ones dislodgment from
the dearest scenes of his life, and his
consequent transplanting into totally
new surroundings, five thousand miles
away, reveal to him that the new home
to which he has come was very largely
the creator of the home he has left
behind.
The law of association could hardly
be responsible for two more diverse
conceptions than are presented in the
words Hawaii and Worcester county.
Palms and perpetual summer, and
pines and the winter of our discomfort!
VINO dare suggest a common interest
and a vital relation?
1t was Emerson who said Hitch
your wagon to a STAR" Our philoso-
phar knew thing or two. Such an
epigram could have its inspiration only
in the atmosphere of New England
thrift and aspiration. Emerson knew
his neighbors, and so he put into con-
crete expression what he saw in the
men of New England, viz, humble in
dustry and lofty ideals. 1t is this
spirit, the survival of the best that the
pilgrims brought across the sea, that
mas made New England effort every
where painstaking, effective, honest
and reverently ambitious for God and
man. 1t was this spirit that during
the years 1920 to 1855 sent over one
hundred missionaries, from New Eng
land alone, 5000 miles south TO Cape
Horn. and 10000 miles northwest in
the Pacific to Hawaii "a distance
quadrupling that sailed by the May
flower a journey of far great hardship
than the pilgrims endured, and a des-
and object calling for SINH
lar heroism and self-isolation.
And to that courageous company of
one hundred men and women Worces-
ter country furnished ten, or about
one-tenth of the entire number sent
from the whole of New England. In
all probability, this county's quota in
this remarkable missionary crusade
was larger than that of any other SIM
liar area in New England. This fact
puts Worcester county and Hawaii
into a most vital historic relationship.
For. after all, men are choicer than
things or localities. And whatever the
men of Worcester county have wrought
is of supreme concern to us in all our
of the record of the past.
Relics and localities we prize because
they preserve for us the suggestion of
our local heroic age. They are links
that unite us TO men Of other DAYS.
But our supreme interest attaches to
the men themselves, and it is clearly
as proper for this historical society TO
take note Of its citizens abroad and of
their record as il is to perfect our
knowledge of the men who lived and
died in the county of their birth.
It is therefore to a brief and alto
gether inadequate resume of the part
borne by citizens of this county in the
building of a nation in the mid-Pacifc
that l devote these pages. Religious
and the cOmpulSiOns of
Christ's great command were the ami
mating motives Of that notable crusade
to a morally submerged and geograph-
ically isolated population. But a hero
of the cross is none the less a man of
his time and environment. And it was
morally impossible for the New Eng
landers of three-quarters OF a century
ago TO carry the religion of Jesus TO an
society of savages, cut off
from all the rest of the world and 10
teach purity of life, and obedience to
law. and love to ones fellOw-creatures
without creating a demand for educa-
ton, and responsible administration.
and tribunals of justice, and adequate
civil rights. and orderly procedure in
the new life of the community. And
with such a demand created, and with
New England men at hand 10 guide
the new development, how could it be
than guided in sympathy
with New England ideals, religious,
political and Industrial?
At the time our first Worcester cOun-
" missionaries were landing in Homo
lulu congress was passing the famous
compromise measure whereby Names
into the Union of states was
made contingent on the admission of
Missouri as a slave state. This was
during MOnrOe's administration, and
almost simultaneous with the advent of
the American missionaries into the
Hawaiian Islands was the enunciatiOn
of the famous Monroe doctrine which
has proved such a forceful factor in