It was impossible to hear this without academical approval; impossible to hear it without practical alarm.

The natives desired to see activity; they desired to see many fair speeches taken on a body of deeds and works of benefit.

Fired by the event of the war, filled with impossible hopes, they might have welcomed in that hour a ruler of the stamp of Brandeis, breathing hurry, perhaps dealing blows.

And the chief justice, unconscious of the fleeting opportunity, ripened his opinions deliberately in Mulinuu; and had been already the better part of half a year in the islands before he went through the form of opening his court.
The curtain had risen; there was no play.

A reaction, a chill sense of disappointment, passed about the island; and intrigue, one moment suspended, was resumed.
In the Berlin Act, the three Powers recognise, on the threshold, "the independence of the Samoan government, and the free right of the natives to elect their chief or king and choose their form of government." True, the text continues that, "in view of the difficulties that surround an election in the present disordered condition of the government," Malietoa Laupepa shall be recognised as king, "unless the three Powers shall by common accord otherwise declare." But perhaps few natives have followed it so far, and even those who have, were possibly all cast abroad again by the next clause: "and his successor shall be duly elected according to the laws and customs of Samoa." The right to elect, freely given in one sentence, was suspended in the next, and a line or so further on appeared to be reconveyed by a side-wind.