The Rice belt journal. (Welsh, Calcasieu Parish, La.) 1900-19??, 1910-11-04

Walla Nambuka, "the Child Of the Sun" To the
simple minded islanders he was always looked
upon as supernatural being His recent death
has plunged his people in gloom. The mourning
robes Of his subjects have been brought out Of
the napa huts and worn In the dead kings honor.
His two little sons. the princellngs Of Naikeva,
will reign in his stead and King Waila sleeps at
the crest of gentle slope overlooking a coral
reef where the feague-long breakers thunder
hour after hour. His bones lie far from those OF
Scotch-American forbears, who settled in south.
ern Illinois nearly century ago.
disappointment in love started him out upon
the long road Of adventure when he was youth
of nineteen or twenty years. One of these unfor-
Inmates who run to extremes In matters OF senti-
ment, he fell In l. with one OF the pretty vii.
lage girls Of old A...on. Things move slowly in
this, one of the oldest and proudest towns Of iii.
nois. In the natural course Of events 1t was to
be expected that the two would marry in the full
ness of time. There was home to be built and
preparations made for start in life. Something
Of the methodical slowness of their English an
cestors chung then, and still cings to the every
day life Of the citizens of Albion The town has
changed but little in the years that have flown
since Thompson left under cover Of nightfall. The
same houses line the spacious public square, The
same h,pnesteads that sheltered the pioneers now
shelter their descendants Of the third and fourth
generations. Red brick homes low-eaved and
with wide doorsteps, still line the older streets of
the little southern Illinois town.
Outwardy the town has changed but little.
and In spirit not at all, since the days when
young Thompson waited for his girlish sweet
heart at the halflighed corner of the court house
square. The Albion of the Flowers the Thomp.
sons the Hulmes the Birkbecks of Park House"
and Marlborough Place" still remains. Had the
white monarch of the savage Isle Of Naikeva
come back to the place Of his birth in the last
year of his life he would have found Little Brit
ain" as the region is known. much as he left It.
1t is the same little city of schools and churches
of quiet homes and quieter streets that it was
when he was barefoot lad stealing away to
Ash and loaf along Bonpas creek. The future
ruler OF Naikeya spent many an idle hour with
hook and line along the shadows Of old Banpas,
II the traditions Of the folk Of Little Britain" are
true lie was fond OF making long trips to the
shores OF the Wabash with his chums, but he
seemed to lack the ambition dear to every boysh
heart, the hope of getting out and seeing the big,
round world There was nothinI to set him
apart from his fellows as one who would taste OF
strange adventures before his death in the an
tipodes The prosy. uneventfu life Of farmer.
q storekeeper or at the most humdrum profess
sOnal man IN country Town was all " which
he could look forward,
There came an interruption, an awakening to
his loves young dream that drove him out of his
home town between shutdown and sunrise one
summers night. This spur to his PRIDE this
wound to his selfloye sent him adVenturing
among the spicy isles of the south seas and made
him a king in his own right before he was twenty
five He was of that shy, retiring, loyal type OF
the Scotch who love deeply when they love at all
He had become engaged +" the village beauty
The div had been set ceremony and the
youth of tie o2ked upon him as
one already lost to the ia ard frolies OF the
single state
About this time a new business house was
opened in the little town and youthful eastern
was sent on by the owners to look after