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Thus again began my regency. With only twenty-five soldiers to guard the palace, a feeling of uncertainty in the mercantile world, and many signs of domestic unrest, my husband thought it best for me to return to Washington Place every night; but each morning at nine o’clock I went to my official duties, and part of these was always the examination of some alarm or rumor which had come to the palace doors. Now it was the report of a secret meeting at some house up the Nuuanu Valley to debate upon an overthrow of my government, again the account of an assembling out on the plains for conspiracy. Often, even after I returned to my home, would come a telephonic message announcing that the palace was to be attacked, and the military must be called out.

On tracing these rumors, whenever there was any basis of truth in them, it was found that the agitation was always the work of that same clique who were never satisfied, always conspiring, always determined that they would either rule or ruin. Such men, having no covenant with their own consciences, suspicious even of their own shadows, in power or out of power, are always a menace to the peace of the community.