Mexico Missouri message. (Mexico, Audrain County, Mo.) 1899-1918, 1910-11-03

waila Nambuka "the Child of the Sun" To the
supplemented islanders he was always looked
upon a 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 aud worn in the dead kings honor.
His two little sons, the princelings of Naikeva,
will reign in his stead and King Waila sleeps at
the crest Of a gentle slope overlooking a coral
reef, where the league-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 a youth
of nineteen or twenty years One of these unfor-
Inmates who run to extremes in matters of senu
ment, he fell in love with one Of the pretty viii
Iage girls Of old Albion. Things move slowly in
this, one Of the oldest and proudest towns of ILL
nois In the natural course of events it was to
be expected that the two would marry In the full
ness of time. There a home to be built and
preparations made for a start in life. Something
of the methodical slowness Of their English an
cestors chung then, and still Clings, 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 homesteads that sheltered the pioneers now
shelter their descendants of the third and fourth
geherationa Red brick homes, low-eaved and
with wide doorsteps still line the older streets of
the little southern Illinois town.
outwardly 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 halflighted 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 10 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.
II is the same little city Of schools and churches,
of quiet homes and queter streets that 1t was
when he was a barefoot lad stealing away to
fish and loaf along Bonpas creek. The future
ruler of Naikeva 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 He 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 boyish
heart the hope of getting out and seeing the big,
round world. There nothing to set him
apart from his fellows as one who would taste OF
strange adventures before his death in the an
tinodes The prosy, uneventful life of farmer
a storekeeper or at the most humdrum profess
sionaI man in a country town was all TO which
ne could look forward
There came an interruption, an awakening to
his loves young dream that drove him out or his
home town between shutdown and sunrise one
summers night This spur to his pride, this
wound TO his selflov2 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 to the village beauty.
THE dav had been set for the ceremony and the
unmarried youth OF the town looked upon him as
one already lost to the fun and frolcs OF the
About this time new business house was
opened in the little town and youthful eastern
manager was sent on by the owneTs 70 look after