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ident should enter to meet the hundred or so strangers who were standing at the opposite end of the large reception-room.

While we were waiting, one of the President's secretaries came down from his office with a special message from President McKinley to like effect. After the President had finished his official handshaking, he approached the place where I sat. Observing him, I arose and advanced to meet him. We had a most delightful conversation; and I found him to be a most agreeable gentleman, both in manner and in words. He spoke very prettily of his wife’s delicate health, alluding to the matter of his own accord, and voluntarily expressing his regret that he could not at once invite me in to visit her. I have been thus particular to describe the facts of my social relations to the White House, because upon no subject has the desire been more frequently shown to prejudice me and my cause in the eyes of the American people.

Strangers have remarked that in no part of the world visited by them have they found the rules of etiquette so exactly laid down and so persistently observed as in Honolulu, when the Islands were under the monarchy. It is to be expected, therefore, that I know what is due to me; that further, as the wife of the governor of Oahu, as the princess royal, and as the reigning sovereign, it was not necessary for me to take lessons in the departments of social or diplomatic etiquette before residing in the national capital of the United States, or making and receiving visits of any nature.