The Rice belt journal. (Welsh, Calcasieu Parish, La.) 1900-19??, 1910-11-25

Wafla Nambuka. "the Child Of the Sun" To the
sImple-minded islanders he was always looked
upon as supernatural being. His recent death
mas plunged his people In gloom. The mourning
ropes OF his subjects have been brought out of
tAe napa nuts and 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
Feef where the league-long breakers thunder
hour after hour. His bones lie far from those Of
scotchAmerican forbears, who settled in south
eTn Illinois nearly century ago.
disappointment In love started him out upon
the long road of adventure when he was a 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
tage girls of old A.,.0n 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 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 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 h"nesteads that sheltered the pioneers now
shelter their descendants of the third and fourth
generations. Red brick homes low-eayed 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 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 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 Rannas
If 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 eyery hovish
heart. the hope of getting out and seeing the big
round world There was nothinT to set him
apart from his fellows one who would taste of
strange adventures before his death in the an
tipodes, The prosy. uneventful life of farmer,
a storekeeper or at the most humdrum profess
sional man IN country Town was all 10 which
he could look forward
There came an interruption, an awakening to
lis loves young dream that drove~hm out of his
lome town between shutdown and sunrise one
night. This spur to his pride this
wound to his selflove sent him adventuring
mong the spicy isles Of the south seas and made
i'm king in his own right before he was twenty
We He was of that shy, retiring, loyal type of
he Scotch who love deeply when they love at ALL
lie had become engaged = the village beauty,
he day had been set I ceremony and the
married youth Of the ooked upon him as
ne already lost to the tu.. and frolics OF the
ngle state.
About this time new business house was
lened in the little town and youthful eastern
anager was sent on by the owners to look after