The House of Pride ..............................................................................................................................................1

Percival Ford wondered why he had come. He did not dance. He did not care much for army people. Yet he

knew them allgliding and revolving there on the broad lanai of the Seaside, the officers in their

freshstarched uniforms of white, the civilians in white and black, and the women bare of shoulders and

arms. After two years in Honolulu the Twentieth was departing to its new station in Alaska, and Percival

Ford, as one of the big men of the Islands, could not help knowing the officers and their women.

But between knowing and liking was a vast gulf. The army women frightened him just a little. They were in

ways quite different from the women he liked bestthe elderly women, the spinsters and the bespectacled

maidens, and the very serious women of all ages whom he met on church and library and kindergarten

committees, who came meekly to him for contributions and advice. He ruled those women by virtue of his

superior mentality, his great wealth, and the high place he occupied in the commercial baronage of Hawaii.

And he was not afraid of them in the least. Sex, with them, was not obtrusive. Yes, that was it. There was in

them something else, or more, than the assertive grossness of life. He was fastidious; he acknowledged that to

himself; and these army women, with their bare shoulders and naked arms, their straightlooking eyes, their

Nor did he get on better with the army men, who took life lightly, drinking and smoking and swearing their

way through life and asserting the essential grossness of flesh no less shamelessly than their women. He was

always uncomfortable in the company of the army men. They seemed uncomfortable, too. And he felt,

always, that they were laughing at him up their sleeves, or pitying him, or tolerating him. Then, too, they

seemed, by mere contiguity, to emphasize a lack in him, to call attention to that in them which he did not

possess and which he thanked God he did not possess. Faugh! They were like their women!

In fact, Percival Ford was no more a woman's man than he was a man's man. A glance at him told the reason.

He had a good constitution, never was on intimate terms with sickness, nor even mild disorders; but he lacked

vitality. His was a negative organism. No blood with a ferment in it could have nourished and shaped that

long and narrow face, those thin lips, lean cheeks, and the small, sharp eyes. The thatch of hair,

dustcoloured, straight and sparse, advertised the niggard soil, as did the nose, thin, delicately modelled, and

just hinting the suggestion of a beak. His meagre blood had denied him much of life, and permitted him to be

an extremist in one thing only, which thing was righteousness. Over right conduct he pondered and agonized,

and that he should do right was as necessary to his nature as loving and being loved were necessary to

He was sitting under the algaroba trees between the lanai and the beach. His eyes wandered over the dancers

and he turned his head away and gazed seaward across the mellowsounding surf to the Southern Cross

burning low on the horizon. He was irritated by the bare shoulders and arms of the women. If he had a

daughter he would never permit it, never. But his hypothesis was the sheerest abstraction. The thought

process had been accompanied by no inner vision of that daughter. He did not see a daughter with arms and

shoulders. Instead, he smiled at the remote contingency of marriage. He was thirtyfive, and, having had no

personal experience of love, he looked upon it, not as mythical, but as bestial. Anybody could marry. The

Japanese and Chinese coolies, toiling on the sugar plantations and in the ricefields, married. They invariably

married at the first opportunity. It was because they were so low in the scale of life. There was nothing else

for them to do. They were like the army men and women. But for him there were other and higher things. He

was different from them from all of them. He was proud of how he happened to be. He had come of no

petty lovematch. He had come of lofty conception of duty and of devotion to a cause. His father had not

married for love. Love was a madness that had never perturbed Isaac Ford. When he answered the call to go

to the heathen with the message of life, he had had no thought and no desire for marriage. In this they were

alike, his father and he. But the Board of Missions was economical. With New England thrift it weighed and

measured and decided that married missionaries were less expensive per capita and more efficacious. So the

Board commanded Isaac Ford to marry. Furthermore, it furnished him with a wife, another zealous soul with

no thought of marriage, intent only on doing the Lord's work among the heathen. They saw each other for the

first time in Boston. The Board brought them together, arranged everything, and by the end of the week they

Percival Ford was proud that he had come of such a union. He had been born high, and he thought of himself

as a spiritual aristocrat. And he was proud of his father. It was a passion with him. The erect, austere figure of

Isaac Ford had burned itself upon his pride. On his desk was a miniature of that soldier of the Lord. In his

bedroom hung the portrait of Isaac Ford, painted at the time when he had served under the Monarchy as

prime minister. Not that Isaac Ford had coveted place and worldly wealth, but that, as prime minister, and,

later, as banker, he had been of greater service to the missionary cause. The German crowd, and the English

crowd, and all the rest of the trading crowd, had sneered at Isaac Ford as a commercial soulsaver; but he, his

son, knew different. When the natives, emerging abruptly from their feudal system, with no conception of the

nature and significance of property in land, were letting their broad acres slip through their fingers, it was

Isaac Ford who had stepped in between the trading crowd and its prey and taken possession of fat, vast

holdings. Small wonder the trading crowd did not like his memory. But he had never looked upon his

enormous wealth as his own. He had considered himself God's steward. Out of the revenues he had built

schools, and hospitals, and churches. Nor was it his fault that sugar, after the slump, had paid forty per cent;

that the bank he founded had prospered into a railroad; and that, among other things, fifty thousand acres of

Oahu pasture land, which he had bought for a dollar an acre, grew eight tons of sugar to the acre every

eighteen months. No, in all truth, Isaac Ford was an heroic figure, fit, so Percival Ford thought privately, to

stand beside the statue of Kamehameha I. in front of the Judiciary Building. Isaac Ford was gone, but he, his

He turned his eyes back to the lanai. What was the difference, he asked himself, between the shameless,

grassgirdled hula dances and the decollete dances of the women of his own race? Was there an essential

"I try to be lenient, Dr. Kennedy, even as I look on," Percival Ford answered gravely. "Won't you sit down?"

Dr. Kennedy sat down, clapping his palms sharply. A whiteclad Japanese servant answered swiftly.

"But I will take something," Ford said firmly. The doctor's eyes showed surprise, and the servant waited.

The doctor laughed at it heartily, as a joke on himself, and glanced at the musicians under the hau tree.

"Why, it's the Aloha Orchestra," he said. "I thought they were with the Hawaiian Hotel on Tuesday nights.

His eyes paused for a moment, and dwelt upon the one who was playing a guitar and singing a Hawaiian song

His face became grave as he looked at the singer, and it was still grave as he turned it to his companion.

"Look here, Ford, isn't it time you let up on Joe Garland? I understand you are in opposition to the Promotion

Committee's sending him to the States on this surfboard proposition, and I've been wanting to speak to you

about it. I should have thought you'd be glad to get him out of the country. It would be a good way to end

"Call it by any name you please," Kennedy went on. "You've hounded that poor devil for years. It's not his

"Not his fault?" Percival Ford's thin lips drew tightly together for the moment. "Joe Garland is dissolute and

"But that's no reason you should keep on after him the way you do. I've watched you from the beginning. The

first thing you did when you returned from college and found him working on the plantation as outside luna

"Not the first thing," Percival Ford said judicially, in a tone he was accustomed to use in committee meetings.

"I gave him his warning. The superintendent said he was a capable luna. I had no objection to him on that

ground. It was what he did outside working hours. He undid my work faster than I could build it up. Of what

use were the Sunday schools, the night schools, and the sewing classes, when in the evenings there was Joe

Garland with his infernal and eternal tumtumming of guitar and ukulele, his strong drink, and his hula

dancing? After I warned him, I came upon himI shall never forget itcame upon him, down at the cabins.

It was evening. I could hear the hula songs before I saw the scene. And when I did see it, there were the girls,

shameless in the moonlight and dancingthe girls upon whom I had worked to teach clean living and right

conduct. And there were three girls there, I remember, just graduated from the mission school. Of course I

discharged Joe Garland. I know it was the same at Hilo. People said I went out of my way when I persuaded

Mason and Fitch to discharge him. But it was the missionaries who requested me to do so. He was undoing

"Afterwards, when he got on the railroad, your railroad, he was discharged without cause," Kennedy

"Not so," was the quick answer. "I had him into my private office and talked with him for half an hour."

Dr. Kennedy laughed with a grating sound. "Who the devil gave it to you to be judge and jury? Does

landlordism give you control of the immortal souls of those that toil for you? I have been your physician. Am

I to expect tomorrow your ukase that I give up Scotch and soda or your patronage? Bah! Ford, you take life

too seriously. Besides, when Joe got into that smuggling scrape (he wasn't in your employ, either), and he

sent word to you, asked you to pay his fine, you left him to do his six months' hard labour on the reef. Don't

forget, you left Joe Garland in the lurch that time. You threw him down, hard; and yet I remember the first

day you came to schoolwe boarded, you were only a day scholaryou had to be initiated. Three times

under in the swimming tankyou remember, it was the regular dose every new boy got. And you held back.

"Yes, I know," Percival Ford said slowly. "I was frightened. And it was a lie, for I could swim . . . And I was

"And you remember who fought for you? who lied for you harder than you could lie, and swore he knew you

couldn't swim? Who jumped into the tank and pulled you out after the first under and was nearly drowned for

"Of course I know," the other rejoined coldly. "But a generous act as a boy does not excuse a lifetime of

"No," was Percival Ford's answer. "That is what makes my position impregnable. I have no personal spite

"Which is another way of saying that he does not agree with you in the way life should be lived," the doctor

"With reason," was the interruption, "considering the jobs out of which you have knocked him."

"Oh, hold on now, Ford. Don't go harping on that. You are pure New England stock. Joe Garland is half

Kanaka. Your blood is thin. His is warm. Life is one thing to you, another thing to him. He laughs and sings

and dances through life, genial, unselfish, childlike, everybody's friend. You go through life like a

perambulating prayerwheel, a friend of nobody but the righteous, and the righteous are those who agree

with you as to what is right. And after all, who shall say? You live like an anchorite. Joe Garland lives like a

good fellow. Who has extracted the most from life? We are paid to live, you know. When the wages are too

meagre we throw up the job, which is the cause, believe me, of all rational suicide. Joe Garland would starve

to death on the wages you get from life. You see, he is made differently. So would you starve on his wages,

"Love, to you, is a word of four letters and a definition which you have extracted from the dictionary. But

love, real love, dewy and palpitant and tender, you do not know. If God made you and me, and men and

women, believe me He made love, too. But to come back. It's about time you quit hounding Joe Garland. It is

not worthy of you, and it is cowardly. The thing for you to do is to reach out and lend him a hand."

"Why I, any more than you?" the other demanded. "Why don't you reach him a hand?"

"I have. I'm reaching him a hand now. I'm trying to get you not to down the Promotion Committee's

proposition of sending him away. I got him the job at Hilo with Mason and Fitch. I've got him half a dozen

jobs, out of every one of which you drove him. But never mind that. Don't forget one thingand a little

frankness won't hurt youit is not fair play to saddle another fault on Joe Garland; and you know that you,

least of all, are the man to do it. Why, man, it's not good taste. It's positively indecent."

"Now I don't follow you," Percival Ford answered. "You're up in the air with some obscure scientific theory

of heredity and personal irresponsibility. But how any theory can hold Joe Garland irresponsible for his

wrongdoings and at the same time hold me personally responsible for themmore responsible than any one

"It's a matter of delicacy, I suppose, or of taste, that prevents you from following me," Dr. Kennedy snapped

out. "It's all very well, for the sake of society, tacitly to ignore some things, but you do more than tacitly

Dr. Kennedy was angry. A deeper red than that of constitutional Scotch and soda suffused his face, as he

"Damn it, man, you can't ask me to be plainer spoken than that. But if you will, all rightIsaac Ford's

Percival Ford sat quietly, an annoyed and shocked expression on his face. Kennedy looked at him curiously,

"Everybody knows it," he said. "I thought you knew it. And since you don't know it, it's time you did, and I'm

glad of the chance of setting you straight. Joe Garland and you are brothershalf brothers."

"It's a lie," Ford cried. "You don't mean it. Joe Garland's mother was Eliza Kunilio." (Dr. Kennedy nodded.)

"I remember her well, with her duck pond and taro patch. His father was Joseph Garland, the beachcomber."

(Dr. Kennedy shook his head.) "He died only two or three years ago. He used to get drunk. There's where Joe

"Dr. Kennedy, you have said something terrible, which I cannot allow to pass. You must either prove or, or . .

"Prove it yourself. Turn around and look at him. You've got him in profile. Look at his nose. That's Isaac

Ford's. Yours is a thin edition of it. That's right. Look. The lines are fuller, but they are all there."

Percival Ford looked at the Kanaka halfbreed who played under the hau tree, and it seemed, as by some

illumination, that he was gazing on a wraith of himself. Feature after feature flashed up an unmistakable

resemblance. Or, rather, it was he who was the wraith of that other fullmuscled and generously moulded

man. And his features, and that other man's features, were all reminiscent of Isaac Ford. And nobody had told

him. Every line of Isaac Ford's face he knew. Miniatures, portraits, and photographs of his father were

passing in review through his mind, and here and there, over and again, in the face before him, he caught

resemblances and vague hints of likeness. It was devil's work that could reproduce the austere features of

Isaac Ford in the loose and sensuous features before him. Once, the man turned, and for one flashing instant it

seemed to Percival Ford that he saw his father, dead and gone, peering at him out of the face of Joe Garland.

"It's nothing at all," he could faintly hear Dr. Kennedy saying, "They were all mixed up in the old days. You

know that. You've seen it all your life. Sailors married queens and begat princesses and all the rest of it. It

"There you are." Kennedy shrugged his shoulders. "Cosmic sap and smoke of life. Old Isaac Ford was

straitlaced and all the rest, and I know there's no explaining it, least of all to himself. He understood it no

more than you do. Smoke of life, that's all. And don't forget one thing, Ford. There was a dab of unruly blood

in old Isaac Ford, and Joe Garland inherited itall of it, smoke of life and cosmic sap; while you inherited

all of old Isaac's ascetic blood. And just because your blood is cold, wellordered, and well disciplined, is

no reason that you should frown upon Joe Garland. When Joe Garland undoes the work you do, remember

that it is only old Isaac Ford on both sides, undoing with one hand what he does with the other. You are Isaac

Percival Ford made no answer, and in the silence Dr. Kennedy finished his forgotten Scotch and soda. From

"There's the machine," Dr. Kennedy said, rising. "I've got to run. I'm sorry I've shaken you up, and at the

same time I'm glad. And know one thing, Isaac Ford's dab of unruly blood was remarkably small, and Joe

Garland got it all. And one other thing. If your father's left hand offend you, don't smite it off. Besides, Joe is

all right. Frankly, if I could choose between you and him to live with me on a desert isle, I'd choose Joe."

Little barelegged children ran about him, playing, on the grass; but Percival Ford did not see them. He was

gazing steadily at the singer under the hau tree. He even changed his position once, to get closer. The clerk of

the Seaside went by, limping with age and dragging his reluctant feet. He had lived forty years on the Islands.

Percival Ford beckoned to him, and the clerk came respectfully, and wondering that he should be noticed by

"John," Ford said, "I want you to give me some information. Won't you sit down?"

The clerk sat down awkwardly, stunned by the unexpected honour. He blinked at the other and mumbled,

"You don't mean to say you don't know?" he questioned, his question in itself the answer.

"Why, he's" John broke off and looked about him helplessly. "Hadn't you better ask somebody else?

Photographs and miniatures of Isaac Ford were trooping through his son's brain, and ghosts of Isaac Ford

seemed in the air about hint "I wish you good night, sir," he could hear the clerk saying, and he saw him

"And you didn't know?" the old man queried, content to linger, now that the crucial point was past.

Out of the clear sky, filled only with stars and moonlight, fell a rain so fine and attenuated as to resemble a

vapour spray. Nobody minded it; the children played on, running barelegged over the grass and leaping into

the sand; and in a few minutes it was gone. In the southeast, Diamond Head, a black blot, sharply defined,

silhouetted its craterform against the stars. At sleepy intervals the surf flung its foam across the sands to the

grass, and far out could be seen the black specks of swimmers under the moon. The voices of the singers,

singing a waltz, died away; and in the silence, from somewhere under the trees, arose the laugh of a woman

that was a lovecry. It startled Percival Ford, and it reminded him of Dr. Kennedy's phrase. Down by the

outrigger canoes, where they lay hauled out on the sand, he saw men and women, Kanakas, reclining

languorously, like lotuseaters, the women in white holokus; and against one such holoku he saw the dark

head of the steersman of the canoe resting upon the woman's shoulder. Farther down, where the strip of sand

widened at the entrance to the lagoon, he saw a man and woman walking side by side. As they drew near the

light lanai, he saw the woman's hand go down to her waist and disengage a girdling arm. And as they passed

him, Percival Ford nodded to a captain he knew, and to a major's daughter. Smoke of life, that was it, an

ample phrase. And again, from under the dark algaroba tree arose the laugh of a woman that was a lovecry;

and past his chair, on the way to bed, a barelegged youngster was led by a chiding Japanese nursemaid.

The voices of the singers broke softly and meltingly into an Hawaiian lovesong, and officers and women,

with encircling arms, were gliding and whirling on the lanai; and once again the woman laughed under the

And Percival Ford knew only disapproval of it all. He was irritated by the lovelaugh of the woman, by the

steersman with pillowed head on the white holoku, by the couples that walked on the beach, by the officers

and women that danced, and by the voices of the singers singing of love, and his brother singing there with

them under the hau tree. The woman that laughed especially irritated him. A curious train of thought was

aroused. He was Isaac Ford's son, and what had happened with Isaac Ford might happen with him. He felt in

his cheeks the faint heat of a blush at the thought, and experienced a poignant sense of shame. He was

appalled by what was in his blood. It was like learning suddenly that his father had been a leper and that his

own blood might bear the taint of that dread disease. Isaac Ford, the austere soldier of the Lordthe old

hypocrite! What difference between him and any beachcomber? The house of pride that Percival Ford had

The hours passed, the army people laughed and danced, the native orchestra played on, and Percival Ford

wrestled with the abrupt and overwhelming problem that had been thrust upon him. He prayed quietly, his

elbow on the table, his head bowed upon his hand, with all the appearance of any tired onlooker. Between the

dances the army men and women and the civilians fluttered up to him and buzzed conventionally, and when

He began to patch together his shattered ideal of Isaac Ford, and for cement he used a cunning and subtle

logic. It was of the sort that is compounded in the brain laboratories of egotists, and it worked. It was

incontrovertible that his father had been made of finer clay than those about him; but still, old Isaac had been

only in the process of becoming, while he, Percival Ford, had become. As proof of it, he rehabilitated his

father and at the same time exalted himself. His lean little ego waxed to colossal proportions. He was great

enough to forgive. He glowed at the thought of it. Isaac Ford had been great, but he was greater, for he could

forgive Isaac Ford and even restore him to the holy place in his memory, though the place was not quite so

holy as it had been. Also, he applauded Isaac Ford for having ignored the outcome of his one step aside. Very

The dance was breaking up. The orchestra had finished "Aloha Oe" and was preparing to go home. Percival

"You tell that man I want to see him," he said, pointing out Joe Garland. "Tell him to come here, now."

Joe Garland approached and halted respectfully several paces away, nervously fingering the guitar which he

"Yes, so I understand," Percival Ford said dryly. "But I did not know it till this evening."

The halfbrother waited uncomfortably in the silence that followed, during which Percival Ford coolly

"You remember that first time I came to school and the boys ducked me?" he asked. "Why did you take my

Another silence fell. Servants were beginning to put out the lights on the lanai.

"And never come back?" Joe Garland faltered. "It is the only land I know. Other lands are cold. I do not know

other lands. I have many friends here. In other lands there would not be one voice to say, 'Aloha, Joe, my

"I said never to come back," Percival Ford reiterated. "The Alameda sails tomorrow for San Francisco."

"That is why," was the retort. "As you said yourself, everybody knows. I will make it worth your while."

All awkwardness and embarrassment disappeared from Joe Garland. Birth and station were bridged and

And in that moment, flashing and fleeting, it was given him to see his brother tower above him like a

mountain, and to feel himself dwindle and dwarf to microscopic insignificance. But it is not well for one to

see himself truly, nor can one so see himself for long and live; and only for that flashing moment did Percival

Ford see himself and his brother in true perspective. The next moment he was mastered by his meagre and

"As I said, I will make it worth your while. You will not suffer. I will pay you well."

"Joe," the other called. "You see my lawyer tomorrow morning. Five hundred down and two hundred a

"You are very kind," Joe Garland answered softly. "You are too kind. And anyway, I guess I don't want your

"Because we are sick they take away our liberty. We have obeyed the law. We have done no wrong. And yet

they would put us in prison. Molokai is a prison. That you know. Niuli, there, his sister was sent to Molokai

seven years ago. He has not seen her since. Nor will he ever see her. She must stay there until she dies. This

is not her will. It is not Niuli's will. It is the will of the white men who rule the land. And who are these white

"We know. We have it from our fathers and our fathers' fathers. They came like lambs, speaking softly. Well

might they speak softly, for we were many and strong, and all the islands were ours. As I say, they spoke

softly. They were of two kinds. The one kind asked our permission, our gracious permission, to preach to us

the word of God. The other kind asked our permission, our gracious permission, to trade with us. That was

the beginning. Today all the islands are theirs, all the land, all the cattleeverything is theirs. They that

preached the word of God and they that preached the word of Rum have foregathered and become great

chiefs. They live like kings in houses of many rooms, with multitudes of servants to care for them. They who

had nothing have everything, and if you, or I, or any Kanaka be hungry, they sneer and say, 'Well, why don't

Koolau paused. He raised one hand, and with gnarled and twisted fingers lifted up the blazing wreath of

hibiscus that crowned his black hair. The moonlight bathed the scene in silver. It was a night of peace, though

those who sat about him and listened had all the seeming of battlewrecks. Their faces were leonine. Here a

space yawned in a face where should have been a nose, and there an armstump showed where a hand had

rotted off. They were men and women beyond the pale, the thirty of them, for upon them had been placed the

They sat, flowergarlanded, in the perfumed, luminous night, and their lips made uncouth noises and their

throats rasped approval of Koolau's speech. They were creatures who once had been men and women. But

they were men and women no longer. They were monsters in face and form grotesque caricatures of

everything human. They were hideously maimed and distorted, and had the seeming of creatures that had

been racked in millenniums of hell. Their hands, when they possessed them, were like harpy claws. Their

faces were the misfits and slips, crushed and bruised by some mad god at play in the machinery of life. Here

and there were features which the mad god had smeared half away, and one woman wept scalding tears from

twin pits of horror, where her eyes once had been. Some were in pain and groaned from their chests. Others

coughed, making sounds like the tearing of tissue. Two were idiots, more like huge apes marred in the

making, until even an ape were an angel. They mowed and gibbered in the moonlight, under crowns of

drooping, golden blossoms. One, whose bloated earlobe flapped like a fan upon his shoulder, caught up a

gorgeous flower of orange and scarlet and with it decorated the monstrous ear that flipflapped with his

And over these things Koolau was king. And this was his kingdom,a flowerthrottled gorge, with beetling

cliffs and crags, from which floated the blattings of wild goats. On three sides the grim walls rose, festooned

in fantastic draperies of tropic vegetation and pierced by caveentrancesthe rocky lairs of Koolau's

subjects. On the fourth side the earth fell away into a tremendous abyss, and, far below, could be seen the

summits of lesser peaks and crags, at whose bases foamed and rumbled the Pacific surge. In fine weather a

boat could land on the rocky beach that marked the entrance of Kalalau Valley, but the weather must be very

fine. And a cool headed mountaineer might climb from the beach to the head of Kalalau Valley, to this

pocket among the peaks where Koolau ruled; but such a mountaineer must be very cool of head, and he must

know the wild goat trails as well. The marvel was that the mass of human wreckage that constituted

Koolau's people should have been able to drag its helpless misery over the giddy goattrails to this

But one of the mowing, apelike travesties emitted a wild shriek of madness, and Koolau waited while the

shrill cachination was tossed back and forth among the rocky walls and echoed distantly through the pulseless

"Brothers, is it not strange? Ours was the land, and behold, the land is not ours. What did these preachers of

the word of God and the word of Rum give us for the land? Have you received one dollar, as much as one

dollar, any one of you, for the land? Yet it is theirs, and in return they tell us we can go to work on the land,

their land, and that what we produce by our toil shall be theirs. Yet in the old days we did not have to work.

"Who brought the sickness, Koolau?" demanded Kiloliana, a lean and wiry man with a face so like a laughing

faun's that one might expect to see the cloven hoofs under him. They were cloven, it was true, but the

cleavages were great ulcers and livid putrefactions. Yet this was Kiloliana, the most daring climber of them

all, the man who knew every goattrail and who had led Koolau and his wretched followers into the recesses

"Ay, well questioned," Koolau answered. "Because we would not work the miles of sugarcane where once

our horses pastured, they brought the Chinese slaves from overseas. And with them came the Chinese

sicknessthat which we suffer from and because of which they would imprison us on Molokai. We were

born on Kauai. We have been to the other islands, some here and some there, to Oahu, to Maui, to Hawaii, to

Honolulu. Yet always did we come back to Kauai. Why did we come back? There must be a reason. Because

we love Kauai. We were born here. Here we have lived. And here shall we dieunless unlessthere be

weak hearts amongst us. Such we do not want. They are fit for Molokai. And if there be such, let them not

remain. Tomorrow the soldiers land on the shore. Let the weak hearts go down to them. They will be sent

swiftly to Molokai. As for us, we shall stay and fight. But know that we will not die. We have rifles. You

know the narrow trails where men must creep, one by one. I, alone, Koolau, who was once a cowboy on

Niihau, can hold the trail against a thousand men. Here is Kapalei, who was once a judge over men and a man

with honour, but who is now a hunted rat, like you and me. Hear him. He is wise."

Kapalei arose. Once he had been a judge. He had gone to college at Punahou. He had sat at meat with lords

and chiefs and the high representatives of alien powers who protected the interests of traders and

missionaries. Such had been Kapalei. But now, as Koolau had said, he was a hunted rat, a creature outside the

law, sunk so deep in the mire of human horror that he was above the law as well as beneath it. His face was

featureless, save for gaping orifices and for the lidless eyes that burned under hairless brows.

"Let us not make trouble," he began. "We ask to be left alone. But if they do not leave us alone, then is the

trouble theirs and the penalty. My fingers are gone, as you see." He held up his stumps of hands that all might

see. "Yet have I the joint of one thumb left, and it can pull a trigger as firmly as did its lost neighbour in the

old days. We love Kauai. Let us live here, or die here, but do not let us go to the prison of Molokai. The

sickness is not ours. We have not sinned. The men who preached the word of God and the word of Rum

brought the sickness with the coolie slaves who work the stolen land. I have been a judge. I know the law and

the justice, and I say to you it is unjust to steal a man's land, to make that man sick with the Chinese sickness,

"Life is short, and the days are filled with pain," said Koolau. "Let us drink and dance and be happy as we

From one of the rocky lairs calabashes were produced and passed round. The calabashes were filled with the

fierce distillation of the root of the tiplant; and as the liquid fire coursed through them and mounted to their

brains, they forgot that they had once been men and women, for they were men and women once more. The

woman who wept scalding tears from open eyepits was indeed a woman apulse with life as she plucked the

strings of an ukulele and lifted her voice in a barbaric lovecall such as might have come from the dark

forestdepths of the primeval world. The air tingled with her cry, softly imperious and seductive. Upon a

mat, timing his rhythm to the woman's song Kiloliana danced. It was unmistakable. Love danced in all his

movements, and, next, dancing with him on the mat, was a woman whose heavy hips and generous breast

gave the lie to her diseasecorroded face. It was a dance of the living dead, for in their disintegrating bodies

life still loved and longed. Ever the woman whose sightless eyes ran scalding tears chanted her lovecry, ever

the dancers of love danced in the warm night, and ever the calabashes went around till in all their brains were

maggots crawling of memory and desire. And with the woman on the mat danced a slender maid whose face

was beautiful and unmarred, but whose twisted arms that rose and fell marked the disease's ravage. And the

two idiots, gibbering and mouthing strange noises, danced apart, grotesque, fantastic, travestying love as they

But the woman's lovecry broke midway, the calabashes were lowered, and the dancers ceased, as all gazed

into the abyss above the sea, where a rocket flared like a wan phantom through the moonlit air.

"It is the soldiers," said Koolau. "Tomorrow there will be fighting. It is well to sleep and be prepared."

The lepers obeyed, crawling away to their lairs in the cliff, until only Koolau remained, sitting motionless in

the moonlight, his rifle across his knees, as he gazed far down to the boats landing on the beach.

The far head of Kalalau Valley had been well chosen as a refuge. Except Kiloliana, who knew backtrails up

the precipitous walls, no man could win to the gorge save by advancing across a knifeedged ridge. This

passage was a hundred yards in length. At best, it was a scant twelve inches wide. On either side yawned the

abyss. A slip, and to right or left the man would fall to his death. But once across he would find himself in an

earthly paradise. A sea of vegetation laved the landscape, pouring its green billows from wall to wall,

dripping from the clifflips in great vinemasses, and flinging a spray of ferns and airplants in to the

multitudinous crevices. During the many months of Koolau's rule, he and his followers had fought with this

vegetable sea. The choking jungle, with its riot of blossoms, had been driven back from the bananas, oranges,

and mangoes that grew wild. In little clearings grew the wild arrowroot; on stone terraces, filled with soil

scrapings, were the taro patches and the melons; and in every open space where the sunshine penetrated were

Koolau had been driven to this refuge from the lower valley by the beach. And if he were driven from it in

turn, he knew of gorges among the jumbled peaks of the inner fastnesses where he could lead his subjects and

live. And now he lay with his rifle beside him, peering down through a tangled screen of foliage at the

soldiers on the beach. He noted that they had large guns with them, from which the sunshine flashed as from

mirrors. The knifeedged passage lay directly before him. Crawling upward along the trail that led to it he

could see tiny specks of men. He knew they were not the soldiers, but the police. When they failed, then the

He affectionately rubbed a twisted hand along his rifle barrel and made sure that the sights were clean. He

had learned to shoot as a wildcattle hunter on Niihau, and on that island his skill as a marksman was

unforgotten. As the toiling specks of men grew nearer and larger, he estimated the range, judged the

deflection of the wind that swept at right angles across the line of fire, and calculated the chances of

overshooting marks that were so far below his level. But he did not shoot. Not until they reached the

beginning of the passage did he make his presence known. He did not disclose himself, but spoke from the

"We want Koolau, the leper," answered the man who led the native police, himself a blueeyed American.

He knew the man, a deputy sheriff, for it was by him that he had been harried out of Niihau, across Kauai, to

"Then come out. We want you. Dead or alive, there is a thousand dollars on your head. You cannot escape."

He conferred with the police, and Koolau saw that they were preparing to rush him.

"Then look first and well about you at the sun and sea and sky, for it will be the last time you behold them."

"That's all right, Koolau," the sheriff said soothingly. "I know you're a dead shot. But you won't shoot me. I

"I say, you know, I've never done you any wrong, have I?" the sheriff persisted.

"You do me wrong when you try to put me in prison," was the reply. "And you do me wrong when you try

The sheriff was no coward. Yet was he undecided. He gazed into the gulf on either side and ran his eyes

The sheriff turned, gave some orders to the police, then started on his perilous way. He advanced slowly. It

was like walking a tight rope. He had nothing to lean upon but the air. The lava rock crumbled under his feet,

and on either side the dislodged fragments pitched downward through the depths. The sun blazed upon him,

and his face was wet with sweat. Still he advanced, until the halfway point was reached.

The sheriff halted, swaying for balance as he stood poised above the void. His face was pale, but his eyes

He started once more. The bullet whirled him half about. On his face was an expression of querulous surprise

as he reeled to the fall. He tried to save himself by throwing his body across the knifeedge; but at that

moment he knew death. The next moment the knifeedge was vacant. Then came the rush, five policemen, in

single file, with superb steadiness, running along the knifeedge. At the same instant the rest of the posse

opened fire on the thicket. It was madness. Five times Koolau pulled the trigger, so rapidly that his shots

constituted a rattle. Changing his position and crouching low under the bullets that were biting and singing

through the bushes, he peered out. Four of the police had followed the sheriff. The fifth lay across the

knifeedge still alive. On the farther side, no longer firing, were the surviving police. On the naked rock there

was no hope for them. Before they could clamber down Koolau could have picked off the last man. But he

did not fire, and, after a conference, one of them took off a white undershirt and waved it as a flag. Followed

by another, he advanced along the knifeedge to their wounded comrade. Koolau gave no sign, but watched

Two hours later, from another thicket, Koolau watched a body of police trying to make the ascent from the

opposite side of the valley. He saw the wild goats flee before them as they climbed higher and higher, until he

"They come over from the next valley, but they cannot pass to this. There is no way. Those men are not wiser

Side by side they lay among the morningglories, with the yellow blossoms of the hau dropping upon them

from overhead, watching the motes of men toil upward, till the thing happened, and three of them, slipping,

In the drowsy afternoon, most of the lepers lay in their rock dens asleep. Koolau, his rifle on his knees,

freshcleaned and ready, dozed in the entrance to his own den. The maid with the twisted arms lay below in

the thicket and kept watch on the knifeedge passage. Suddenly Koolau was startled wide awake by the

sound of an explosion on the beach. The next instant the atmosphere was incredibly rent asunder. The terrible

sound frightened him. It was as if all the gods had caught the envelope of the sky in their hands and were

ripping it apart as a woman rips apart a sheet of cotton cloth. But it was such an immense ripping, growing

swiftly nearer. Koolau glanced up apprehensively, as if expecting to see the thing. Then high up on the cliff

overhead the shell burst in a fountain of black smoke. The rock was shattered, the fragments falling to the

Koolau passed his hand across his sweaty brow. He was terribly shaken. He had had no experience with

A second and a third shell flew screaming over the top of the wall, bursting beyond view. Kapahei

methodically kept the count. The lepers crowded into the open space before the caves. At first they were

frightened, but as the shells continued their flight overhead the leper folk became reassured and began to

The two idiots shrieked with delight, prancing wild antics as each airtormenting shell went by. Koolau

began to recover his confidence. No damage was being done. Evidently they could not aim such large

But a change came over the situation. The shells began to fall short. One burst below in the thicket by the

knifeedge. Koolau remembered the maid who lay there on watch, and ran down to see. The smoke was still

rising from the bushes when he crawled in. He was astounded. The branches were splintered and broken.

Where the girl had lain was a hole in the ground. The girl herself was in shattered fragments. The shell had

First peering out to make sure no soldiers were attempting the passage, Koolau started back on the run for the

caves. All the time the shells were moaning, whining, screaming by, and the valley was rumbling and

reverberating with the explosions. As he came in sight of the caves, he saw the two idiots cavorting about,

clutching each other's hands with their stumps of fingers. Even as he ran, Koolau saw a spout of black smoke

rise from the ground, near to the idiots. They were flung apart bodily by the explosion. One lay motionless,

but the other was dragging himself by his hands toward the cave. His legs trailed out helplessly behind him,

while the blood was pouring from his body. He seemed bathed in blood, and as he crawled he cried like a

little dog. The rest of the lepers, with the exception of Kapahei, had fled into the caves.

This last shell had fairly entered into one of the caves. The explosion caused the caves to empty. But from the

particular cave no one emerged. Koolau crept in through the pungent, acrid smoke. Four bodies, frightfully

mangled, lay about. One of them was the sightless woman whose tears till now had never ceased.

Outside, Koolau found his people in a panic and already beginning to climb the goattrail that led out of the

gorge and on among the jumbled heights and chasms. The wounded idiot, whining feebly and dragging

himself along on the ground by his hands, was trying to follow. But at the first pitch of the wall his

"It would be better to kill him," said Koolau to Kapahei, who still sat in the same place.

"Twentytwo," Kapahei answered. "Yes, it would be a wise thing to kill him. Twentythreetwentyfour."

The idiot whined sharply when he saw the rifle levelled at him. Koolau hesitated, then lowered the gun.

He arose, and with a heavy fragment of rock in his hand, approached the wounded thing. As he lifted his arm

to strike, a shell burst full upon him, relieving him of the necessity of the act and at the same time putting an

Koolau was alone in the gorge. He watched the last of his people drag their crippled bodies over the brow of

the height and disappear. Then he turned and went down to the thicket where the maid had keen killed. The

shellfire still continued, but he remained; for far below he could see the soldiers climbing up. A shell burst

twenty feet away. Flattening himself into the earth, he heard the rush of the fragments above his body. A

shower of hau blossoms rained upon him. He lifted his head to peer down the trail, and sighed. He was very

much afraid. Bullets from rifles would not have worried him, but this shellfire was abominable. Each time a

shell shrieked by he shivered and crouched; but each time he lifted his head again to watch the trail.

At last the shells ceased. This, he reasoned, was because the soldiers were drawing near. They crept along the

trail in single file, and he tried to count them until he lost track. At any rate, there were a hundred or so of

themall come after Koolau the leper. He felt a fleeting prod of pride. With war guns and rifles, police and

soldiers, they came for him, and he was only one man, a crippled wreck of a man at that. They offered a

thousand dollars for him, dead or alive. In all his life he had never possessed that much money. The thought

was a bitter one. Kapahei had been right. He, Koolau, had done no wrong. Because the haoles wanted labour

with which to work the stolen land, they had brought in the Chinese coolies, and with them had come the

sickness. And now, because he had caught the sickness, he was worth a thousand dollarsbut not to himself.

It was his worthless carcass, rotten with disease or dead from a bursting shell, that was worth all that money.

When the soldiers reached the knifeedged passage, he was prompted to warn them. But his gaze fell upon

the body of the murdered maid, and he kept silent. When six had ventured on the knifeedge, he opened fire.

Nor did he cease when the knifeedge was bare. He emptied his magazine, reloaded, and emptied it again. He

kept on shooting. All his wrongs were blazing in his brain, and he was in a fury of vengeance. All down the

goattrail the soldiers were firing, and though they lay flat and sought to shelter themselves in the shallow

inequalities of the surface, they were exposed marks to him. Bullets whistled and thudded about him, and an

occasional ricochet sang sharply through the air. One bullet ploughed a crease through his scalp, and a second

It was a massacre, in which one man did the killing. The soldiers began to retreat, helping along their

wounded. As Koolau picked them off he became aware of the smell of burnt meat. He glanced about him at

first, and then discovered that it was his own hands. The heat of the rifle was doing it. The leprosy had

destroyed most of the nerves in his hands. Though his flesh burned and he smelled it, there was no sensation.

He lay in the thicket, smiling, until he remembered the war guns. Without doubt they would open upon him

again, and this time upon the very thicket from which he had inflicted the danger. Scarcely had he changed

his position to a nook behind a small shoulder of the wall where he had noted that no shells fell, than the

bombardment recommenced. He counted the shells. Sixty more were thrown into the gorge before the

warguns ceased. The tiny area was pitted with their explosions, until it seemed impossible that any creature

could have survived. So the soldiers thought, for, under the burning afternoon sun, they climbed the

goattrail again. And again the knifeedged passage was disputed, and again they fell back to the beach.

For two days longer Koolau held the passage, though the soldiers contented themselves with flinging shells

into his retreat. Then Pahau, a leper boy, came to the top of the wall at the back of the gorge and shouted

down to him that Kiloliana, hunting goats that they might eat, had been killed by a fall, and that the women

were frightened and knew not what to do. Koolau called the boy down and left him with a spare gun with

which to guard the passage. Koolau found his people disheartened. The majority of them were too helpless to

forage food for themselves under such forbidding circumstances, and all were starving. He selected two

women and a man who were not too far gone with the disease, and sent them back to the gorge to bring up

food and mats. The rest he cheered and consoled until even the weakest took a hand in building rough

But those he had dispatched for food did not return, and he started back for the gorge. As he came out on the

brow of the wall, half a dozen rifles cracked. A bullet tore through the fleshy part of his shoulder, and his

cheek was cut by a sliver of rock where a second bullet smashed against the cliff. In the moment that this

happened, and he leaped back, he saw that the gorge was alive with soldiers. His own people had betrayed

him. The shellfire had been too terrible, and they had preferred the prison of Molokai.

Koolau dropped back and unslung one of his heavy cartridgebelts. Lying among the rocks, he allowed the

head and shoulders of the first soldier to rise clearly into view before pulling trigger. Twice this happened,

and then, after some delay, in place of a head and shoulders a white flag was thrust above the edge of the

Koolau forgot where he was, forgot everything, as he lay and marvelled at the strange persistence of these

haoles who would have their will though the sky fell in. Aye, they would have their will over all men and all

things, even though they died in getting it. He could not but admire them, too, what of that will in them that

was stronger than life and that bent all things to their bidding. He was convinced of the hopelessness of his

struggle. There was no gainsaying that terrible will of the haoles. Though he killed a thousand, yet would

they rise like the sands of the sea and come upon him, ever more and more. They never knew when they were

beaten. That was their fault and their virtue. It was where his own kind lacked. He could see, now, how the

handful of the preachers of God and the preachers of Rum had conquered the land. It was because

It was he voice of the invisible man under the white flag. There he was, like any haole, driving straight

The man's head and shoulders arose, then his whole body. He was a smoothfaced, blueeyed youngster of

twentyfive, slender and natty in his captain's uniform. He advanced until halted, then seated himself a dozen

"Because you are a man, Koolau, though a bad one. I know your story. You kill fairly."

"What have you done with my people?" he demanded. "The boy, the two women, and the man?"

"I am a free man," he announced. "I have done no wrong. All I ask is to be left alone. I have lived free, and I

"Then your people are wiser than you," answered the young captain. "Lookthey are coming now."

Koolau turned and watched the remnant of his band approach. Groaning and sighing, a ghastly procession, it

dragged its wretchedness past. It was given to Koolau to taste a deeper bitterness, for they hurled

imprecations and insults at him as they went by; and the panting hag who brought up the rear halted, and with

skinny, harpyclaws extended, shaking her snarling death's head from side to side, she laid a curse upon him.

One by one they dropped over the lipedge and surrendered to the hiding soldiers.

"You can go now," said Koolau to the captain. "I will never give myself up. That is my last word.

The captain slipped over the cliff to his soldiers. The next moment, and without a flag of truce, he hoisted his

hat on his scabbard, and Koolau's bullet tore through it. That afternoon they shelled him out from the beach,

and as he retreated into the high inaccessible pockets beyond, the soldiers followed him.

For six weeks they hunted him from pocket to pocket, over the volcanic peaks and along the goattrails.

When he hid in the lantana jungle, they formed lines of beaters, and through lantana jungle and guava scrub

they drove him like a rabbit. But ever he turned and doubled and eluded. There was no cornering him. When

pressed too closely, his sure rifle held them back and they carried their wounded down the goattrails to the

beach. There were times when they did the shooting as his brown body showed for a moment through the

underbrush. Once, five of them caught him on an exposed goattrail between pockets. They emptied their

rifles at him as he limped and climbed along his dizzy way. Afterwards they found bloodstains and knew that

he was wounded. At the end of six weeks they gave up. The soldiers and police returned to Honolulu, and

Kalalau Valley was left to him for his own, though headhunters ventured after him from time to time and to

Two years later, and for the last time, Koolau crawled into a thicket and lay down among the tileaves and

wild ginger blossoms. Free he had lived, and free he was dying. A slight drizzle of rain began to fall, and he

drew a ragged blanket about the distorted wreck of his limbs. His body was covered with an oilskin coat.

Across his chest he laid his Mauser rifle, lingering affectionately for a moment to wipe the dampness from

the barrel. The hand with which he wiped had no fingers left upon it with which to pull the trigger.

He closed his eyes, for, from the weakness in his body and the fuzzy turmoil in his brain, he knew that his

end was near. Like a wild animal he had crept into hiding to die. Halfconscious, aimless and wandering, he

lived back in his life to his early manhood on Niihau. As life faded and the drip of the rain grew dim in his

ears it seemed to him that he was once more in the thick of the horse breaking, with raw colts rearing and

bucking under him, his stirrups tied together beneath, or charging madly about the breaking corral and

driving the helping cowboys over the rails. The next instant, and with seeming naturalness, he found himself

pursuing the wild bulls of the upland pastures, roping them and leading them down to the valleys. Again the

All his lusty, wholebodied youth was his, until the sharp pangs of impending dissolution brought him back.

He lifted his monstrous hands and gazed at them in wonder. But how? Why? Why should the wholeness of

that wild youth of his change to this? Then he remembered, and once again, and for a moment, he was

Koolau, the leper. His eyelids fluttered wearily down and the drip of the rain ceased in his ears. A prolonged

trembling set up in his body. This, too, ceased. He halflifted his head, but it fell back. Then his eyes opened,

and did not close. His last thought was of his Mauser, and he pressed it against his chest with his folded,

Hawaii is a queer place. Everything socially is what I may call topsyturvy. Not but what things are correct.

They are almost too much so. But still things are sort of upside down. The most ultra exclusive set there is

the "Missionary Crowd." It comes with rather a shock to learn that in Hawaii the obscure martyrdomseeking

missionary sits at the head of the table of the moneyed aristocracy. But it is true. The humble New

Englanders who came out in the third decade of the nineteenth century, came for the lofty purpose of teaching

the kanakas the true religion, the worship of the one only genuine and undeniable God. So well did they

succeed in this, and also in civilizing the kanaka, that by the second or third generation he was practically

extinct. This being the fruit of the seed of the Gospel, the fruit of the seed of the missionaries (the sons and

the grandsons) was the possession of the islands themselves,of the land, the ports, the town sites, and the

sugar plantations: The missionary who came to give the bread of life remained to gobble up the whole

But that is not the Hawaiian queerness I started out to tell. Only one cannot speak of things Hawaiian without

mentioning the missionaries. There is Jack Kersdale, the man I wanted to tell about; he came of missionary

stock. That is, on his grandmother's side. His grandfather was old Benjamin Kersdale, a Yankee trader, who

got his start for a million in the old days by selling cheap whiskey and squareface gin. There's another queer

thing. The old missionaries and old traders were mortal enemies. You see, their interests conflicted. But their

"Thy life is musicFate the notes prolong! Each isle a stanza, and the whole a song."

And he was right. Flesh is golden there. The native women are sun ripe Junos, the native men bronzed

Apollos. They sing, and dance, and all are flowerbejewelled and flowercrowned. And, outside the rigid

"Missionary Crowd," the white men yield to the climate and the sun, and no matter how busy they may be,

are prone to dance and sing and wear flowers behind their ears and in their hair. Jack Kersdale was one of

these fellows. He was one of the busiest men I ever met. He was a severaltimes millionaire. He was a

sugarking, a coffee planter, a rubber pioneer, a cattle rancher, and a promoter of three out of every four new

enterprises launched in the islands. He was a society man, a club man, a yachtsman, a bachelor, and withal as

handsome a man as was ever doted upon by mammas with marriageable daughters. Incidentally, he had

finished his education at Yale, and his head was crammed fuller with vital statistics and scholarly information

concerning Hawaii Nei than any other islander I ever encountered. He turned off an immense amount of

work, and he sang and danced and put flowers in his hair as immensely as any of the idlers. He had grit, and

had fought two duelsboth, politicalwhen he was no more than a raw youth essaying his first adventures

in politics. In fact, he played a most creditable and courageous part in the last revolution, when the native

dynasty was overthrown; and he could not have been over sixteen at the time. I am pointing out that he was

no coward, in order that you may appreciate what happens later on. I've seen him in the breaking yard at the

Haleakala Ranch, conquering a fouryearold brute that for two years had defied the pick of Von Tempsky's

cowboys. And I must tell of one other thing. It was down in Kona,or up, rather, for the Kona people

scorn to live at less than a thousand feet elevation. We were all on the lanai of Doctor Goodhue's bungalow. I

was talking with Dottie Fairchild when it happened. A big centipedeit was seven inches, for we measured

it afterwardsfell from the rafters overhead squarely into her coiffure. I confess, the hideousness of it

paralysed me. I couldn't move. My mind refused to work. There, within two feet of me, the ugly venomous

devil was writhing in her hair. It threatened at any moment to fall down upon her exposed shoulderswe had

"But what is it?" she insisted, growing frightened by the fright she read in my eyes and on my stammering

My exclamation attracted Kersdale's attention. He glanced our way carelessly, but in that glance took in

And with one hand he caught her scarf and drew it tightly around her shoulders so that the centipede could

not fall inside her bodice. With the other handthe righthe reached into her hair, caught the repulsive

abomination as near as he was able by the nape of the neck, and held it tightly between thumb and forefinger

as he withdrew it from her hair. It was as horrible and heroic a sight as man could wish to see. It made my

flesh crawl. The centipede, seven inches of squirming legs, writhed and twisted and dashed itself about his

hand, the body twining around the fingers and the legs digging into the skin and scratching as the beast

endeavoured to free itself. It bit him twiceI saw itthough he assured the ladies that he was not harmed as

he dropped it upon the walk and stamped it into the gravel. But I saw him in the surgery five minutes

afterwards, with Doctor Goodhue scarifying the wounds and injecting permanganate of potash. The next

morning Kersdale's arm was as big as a barrel, and it was three weeks before the swelling went down.

All of which has nothing to do with my story, but which I could not avoid giving in order to show that Jack

Kersdale was anything but a coward. It was the cleanest exhibition of grit I have ever seen. He never turned a

hair. The smile never left his lips. And he dived with thumb and forefinger into Dottie Fairchild's hair as gaily

as if it had been a box of salted almonds. Yet that was the man I was destined to see stricken with a fear a

thousand times more hideous even than the fear that was mine when I saw that writhing abomination in

I was interested in leprosy, and upon that, as upon every other island subject, Kersdale had encyclopedic

knowledge. In fact, leprosy was one of his hobbies. He was an ardent defender of the settlement at Molokai,

where all the island lepers were segregated. There was much talk and feeling among the natives, fanned by

the demagogues, concerning the cruelties of Molokai, where men and women, not alone banished from

friends and family, were compelled to live in perpetual imprisonment until they died. There were no

reprieves, no commutations of sentences. "Abandon hope" was written over the portal of Molokai.

"I tell you they are happy there," Kersdale insisted. "And they are infinitely better off than their friends and

relatives outside who have nothing the matter with them. The horrors of Molokai are all poppycock. I can

take you through any hospital or any slum in any of the great cities of the world and show you a thousand

times worse horrors. The living death! The creatures that once were men! Bosh! You ought to see those living

deaths racing horses on the Fourth of July. Some of them own boats. One has a gasoline launch. They have

nothing to do but have a good time. Food, shelter, clothes, medical attendance, everything, is theirs. They are

the wards of the Territory. They have a much finer climate than Honolulu, and the scenery is magnificent. I

shouldn't mind going down there myself for the rest of my days. It is a lovely spot."

So Kersdale on the joyous leper. He was not afraid of leprosy. He said so himself, and that there wasn't one

chance in a million for him or any other white man to catch it, though he confessed afterward that one of his

school chums, Alfred Starter, had contracted it, gone to Molokai, and there died.

"You know, in the old days," Kersdale explained, "there was no certain test for leprosy. Anything unusual or

abnormal was sufficient to send a fellow to Molokai. The result was that dozens were sent there who were no

more lepers than you or I. But they don't make that mistake now. The Board of Health tests are infallible. The

funny thing is that when the test was discovered they immediately went down to Molokai and applied it, and

they found a number who were not lepers. These were immediately deported. Happy to get away? They

wailed harder at leaving the settlement than when they left Honolulu to go to it. Some refused to leave, and

really had to be forced out. One of them even married a leper woman in the last stages and then wrote

pathetic letters to the Board of Health, protesting against his expulsion on the ground that no one was so well

"The bacteriological test. There is no getting away from it. Doctor Herveyhe's our expert, you knowwas

the first man to apply it here. He is a wizard. He knows more about leprosy than any living man, and if a cure

is ever discovered, he'll be that discoverer. As for the test, it is very simple. They have succeeded in isolating

the bacillus leprae and studying it. They know it now when they see it. All they do is to snip a bit of skin

from the suspect and subject it to the bacteriological test. A man without any visible symptoms may be chock

"Who can say? It takes seven years for it to incubate. If you have any doubts go and see Doctor Hervey. He'll

Later on he introduced me to Dr. Hervey, who loaded me down with Board of Health reports and pamphlets

on the subject, and took me out to Kalihi, the Honolulu receiving station, where suspects were examined and

confirmed lepers were held for deportation to Molokai. These deportations occurred about once a month,

when, the last good byes said, the lepers were marched on board the little steamer, the Noeau, and carried

"Just the man I want to see," was his greeting. "I'll show you the saddest aspect of the whole situationthe

lepers wailing as they depart for Molokai. The Noeau will be taking them on board in a few minutes. But let

me warn you not to let your feelings be harrowed. Real as their grief is, they'd wail a whole sight harder a

year hence if the Board of Health tried to take them away from Molokai. We've just time for a whiskey and

soda. I've a carriage outside. It won't take us five minutes to get down to the wharf."

To the wharf we drove. Some forty sad wretches, amid their mats, blankets, and luggage of various sorts,

were squatting on the stringer piece. The Noeau had just arrived and was making fast to a lighter that lay

between her and the wharf. A Mr. McVeigh, the superintendent of the settlement, was overseeing the

embarkation, and to him I was introduced, also to Dr. Georges, one of the Board of Health physicians whom I

had already met at Kalihi. The lepers were a woebegone lot. The faces of the majority were hideoustoo

horrible for me to describe. But here and there I noticed fairly goodlooking persons, with no apparent signs

of the fell disease upon them. One, I noticed, a little white girl, not more than twelve, with blue eyes and

golden hair. One cheek, however, showed the leprous bloat. On my remarking on the sadness of her alien

"Oh, I don't know. It's a happy day in her life. She comes from Kauai. Her father is a brute. And now that she

has developed the disease she is going to join her mother at the settlement. Her mother was sent down three

"You can't always tell from appearances," Mr. McVeigh explained. That man there, that big chap, who looks

the pink of condition, with nothing the matter with him, I happen to know has a perforating ulcer in his foot

and another in his shoulderblade. Then there are othersthere, see that girl's hand, the one who is smoking

the cigarette. See her twisted fingers. That's the anaesthetic form. It attacks the nerves. You could cut her

fingers off with a dull knife, or rub them off on a nutmeggrater, and she would not experience the slightest

"Yes, but that finelooking woman, there," I persisted; "surely, surely, there can't be anything the matter with

"A sad case," Mr. McVeigh answered over his shoulder, already turning away to walk down the wharf with

She was a beautiful woman, and she was pure Polynesian. From my meagre knowledge of the race and its

types I could not but conclude that she had descended from old chief stock. She could not have been more

than twentythree or four. Her lines and proportions were magnificent, and she was just beginning to show

"It was a blow to all of us," Dr. Georges volunteered. "She gave herself up voluntarily, too. No one suspected.

But somehow she had contracted the disease. It broke us all up, I assure you. We've kept it out of the papers,

though. Nobody but us and her family knows what has become of her. In fact, if you were to ask any man in

Honolulu, he'd tell you it was his impression that she was somewhere in Europe. It was at her request that

"But who is she?" I asked. "Certainly, from the way you talk about her, she must be somebody."

"Lucy Mokunui?" I repeated, haunted by some familiar association. I shook my head. "It seems to me I've

"Never heard of Lucy Mokunui! The Hawaiian nightingale! I beg your pardon. Of course you are a malahini,

{1} and could not be expected to know. Well, Lucy Mokunui was the best beloved of Honoluluof all

"And I mean it. She is finished." He shrugged his shoulders pityingly. "A dozen haolesI beg your pardon,

white menhave lost their hearts to her at one time or another. And I'm not counting in the ruck. The dozen

"She could have married the son of the Chief Justice if she'd wanted to. You think she's beautiful, eh? But

you should hear her sing. Finest native woman singer in Hawaii Nei. Her throat is pure silver and melted

sunshine. We adored her. She toured America first with the Royal Hawaiian Band. After that she made two

"Oh!" I cried. "I remember now. I heard her two years ago at the Boston Symphony. So that is she. I

I was oppressed by a heavy sadness. Life was a futile thing at best. A short two years and this magnificent

creature, at the summit of her magnificent success, was one of the leper squad awaiting deportation to

"The poor old tramp explains his poor old ulcers; Life is, I think, a blunder and a shame."

I recoiled from my own future. If this awful fate fell to Lucy Mokunui, what might my lot not be?or

anybody's lot? I was thoroughly aware that in life we are in the midst of deathbut to be in the midst of

living death, to die and not be dead, to be one of that draft of creatures that once were men, aye, and women,

like Lucy Mokunui, the epitome of all Polynesian charms, an artist as well, and well beloved of men . I am

afraid I must have betrayed my perturbation, for Doctor Georges hastened to assure me that they were very

It was all too inconceivably monstrous. I could not bear to look at her. A short distance away, behind a

stretched rope guarded by a policeman, were the lepers' relatives and friends. They were not allowed to come

near. There were no last embraces, no kisses of farewell. They called back and forth to one anotherlast

messages, last words of love, last reiterated instructions. And those behind the rope looked with terrible

intensity. It was the last time they would behold the faces of their loved ones, for they were the living dead,

Doctor Georges gave the command, and the unhappy wretches dragged themselves to their feet and under

their burdens of luggage began to stagger across the lighter and aboard the steamer. It was the funeral

procession. At once the wailing started from those behind the rope. It was bloodcurdling; it was

heartrending. I never heard such woe, and I hope never to again. Kersdale and McVeigh were still at the

other end of the wharf, talking earnestly politics, of course, for both were headoverheels in that

particular game. When Lucy Mokunui passed me, I stole a look at her. She WAS beautiful. She was beautiful

by our standards, as wellone of those rare blossoms that occur but once in generations. And she, of all

women, was doomed to Molokai. She straight on board, and aft on the open deck where the lepers huddled by

The lines were cast off, and the Noeau began to move away from the wharf. The wailing increased. Such

grief and despair! I was just resolving that never again would I be a witness to the sailing of the Noeau, when

McVeigh and Kersdale returned. The latter's eyes were sparkling, and his lips could not quite hide the smile

of delight that was his. Evidently the politics they had talked had been satisfactory. The rope had been flung

aside, and the lamenting relatives now crowded the stringer piece on either side of us.

"That's her mother," Doctor Georges whispered, indicating an old woman next to me, who was rocking back

and forth and gazing at the steamer rail out of tearblinded eyes. I noticed that Lucy Mokunui was also

wailing. She stopped abruptly and gazed at Kersdale. Then she stretched forth her arms in that adorable,

sensuous way that Olga Nethersole has of embracing an audience. And with arms outspread, she cried:

He heard the cry, and looked. Never was a man overtaken by more crushing fear. He reeled on the stringer

piece, his face went white to the roots of his hair, and he seemed to shrink and wither away inside his clothes.

He threw up his hands and groaned, "My God! My God!" Then he controlled himself by a great effort.

And he stood there on the wharf, waving his hands to her till the Noeau was clear away and the faces lining

"I thought you knew," said McVeigh, who had been regarding him curiously. "You, of all men, should have

He sank down in a seat, panting and gasping. The pallor of his face had increased. His lips were compressed

and the sweat was standing out on his forehead and upper lip. He seemed in some horrible agony.

"For God's sake, Martin, make those horses go!" he broke out suddenly. "Lay the whip into them!do you

"Let them break," Kersdale answered. "I'll pay your fine and square you with the police. Put it to them. That's

"And I never knew, I never knew," he muttered, sinking back in the seat and with trembling hands wiping the

The carriage was bouncing, swaying and lurching around corners at such a wild pace as to make conversation

impossible. Besides, there was nothing to say. But I could hear him muttering over and over, "And I never

Never are there such departures as from the dock at Honolulu. The great transport lay with steam up, ready to

pull out. A thousand persons were on her decks; five thousand stood on the wharf. Up and down the long

gangway passed native princes and princesses, sugar kings and the high officials of the Territory. Beyond, in

long lines, kept in order by the native police, were the carriages and motorcars of the Honolulu aristocracy.

On the wharf the Royal Hawaiian Band played "Aloha Oe," and when it finished, a stringed orchestra of

native musicians on board the transport took up the same sobbing strains, the native woman singer's voice

rising birdlike above the instruments and the hubbub of departure. It was a silver reed, sounding its clear,

Forward, on the lower deck, the rail was lined six deep with khaki clad young boys, whose bronzed faces

told of three years' campaigning under the sun. But the farewell was not for them. Nor was it for the

whiteclad captain on the lofty bridge, remote as the stars, gazing down upon the tumult beneath him. Nor

was the farewell for the young officers farther aft, returning from the Philippines, nor for the whitefaced,

climateravaged women by their sides. Just aft the gangway, on the promenade deck, stood a score of United

States Senators with their wives and daughtersthe Senatorial junketing party that for a month had been

dined and wined, surfeited with statistics and dragged up volcanic hill and down lava dale to behold the

glories and resources of Hawaii. It was for the junketing party that the transport had called in at Honolulu,

The Senators were garlanded and bedecked with flowers. Senator Jeremy Sambrooke's stout neck and portly

bosom were burdened with a dozen wreaths. Out of this mass of bloom and blossom projected his head and

the greater portion of his freshly sunburned and perspiring face. He thought the flowers an abomination, and

as he looked out over the multitude on the wharf it was with a statistical eye that saw none of the beauty, but

that peered into the labour power, the factories, the railroads, and the plantations that lay back of the

multitude and which the multitude expressed. He saw resources and thought development, and he was too

busy with dreams of material achievement and empire to notice his daughter at his side, talking with a young

fellow in a natty summer suit and straw hat, whose eager eyes seemed only for her and never left her face.

Had Senator Jeremy had eyes for his daughter, he would have seen that, in place of the young girl of fifteen

he had brought to Hawaii a short month before, he was now taking away with him a woman.

Hawaii has a ripening climate, and Dorothy Sambrooke had been exposed to it under exceptionally ripening

circumstances. Slender, pale, with blue eyes a trifle tired from poring over the pages of books and trying to

muddle into an understanding of lifesuch she had been the month before. But now the eyes were warm

instead of tired, the cheeks were touched with the sun, and the body gave the first hint and promise of

swelling lines. During that month she had left books alone, for she had found greater joy in reading from the

book of life. She had ridden horses, climbed volcanoes, and learned surf swimming. The tropics had entered

into her blood, and she was aglow with the warmth and colour and sunshine. And for a month she had been in

the company of a manStephen Knight, athlete, surf board rider, a bronzed god of the sea who bitted the

Dorothy Sambrooke was unaware of the change. Her consciousness was still that of a young girl, and she was

surprised and troubled by Steve's conduct in this hour of saying goodbye. She had looked upon him as her

playfellow, and for the month he had been her playfellow; but now he was not parting like a playfellow. He

talked excitedly and disconnectedly, or was silent, by fits and starts. Sometimes he did not hear what she was

saying, or if he did, failed to respond in his wonted manner. She was perturbed by the way he looked at her.

She had not known before that he had such blazing eyes. There was something in his eyes that was terrifying.

She could not face it, and her own eyes continually drooped before it. Yet there was something alluring about

it, as well, and she continually returned to catch a glimpse of that blazing, imperious, yearning something that

she had never seen in human eyes before. And she was herself strangely bewildered and excited.

The transport's huge whistle blew a deafening blast, and the flower crowned multitude surged closer to the

side of the dock. Dorothy Sambrooke's fingers were pressed to her ears; and as she made a moue of distaste at

the outrage of sound, she noticed again the imperious, yearning blaze in Steve's eyes. He was not looking at

her, but at her ears, delicately pink and transparent in the slanting rays of the afternoon sun. Curious and

fascinated, she gazed at that strange something in his eyes until he saw that he had been caught. She saw his

cheeks flush darkly and heard him utter inarticulately. He was embarrassed, and she was aware of

embarrassment herself. Stewards were going about nervously begging shoregoing persons to be gone. Steve

put out his hand. When she felt the grip of the fingers that had gripped hers a thousand times on surfboards

and lava slopes, she heard the words of the song with a new understanding as they sobbed in the Hawaiian

"Ka halia ko aloha kai hiki mai, Ke hone ae nei i ku'u manawa, O oe no kan aloha A loko e hana nei."

Steve had taught her air and words and meaningso she had thought, till this instant; and in this instant of

the last finger clasp and warm contact of palms she divined for the first time the real meaning of the song.

She scarcely saw him go, nor could she note him on the crowded gangway, for she was deep in a memory

maze, living over the four weeks just past, rereading events in the light of revelation.

When the Senatorial party had landed, Steve had been one of the committee of entertainment. It was he who

had given them their first exhibition of surf riding, out at Waikiki Beach, paddling his narrow board seaward

until he became a disappearing speck, and then, suddenly reappearing, rising like a seagod from out of the

welter of spume and churning whiterising swiftly higher and higher, shoulders and chest and loins and

limbs, until he stood poised on the smoking crest of a mighty, milelong billow, his feet buried in the flying

foam, hurling beachward with the speed of an express train and stepping calmly ashore at their astounded

feet. That had been her first glimpse of Steve. He had been the youngest man on the committee, a youth,

himself, of twenty. He had not entertained by speechmaking, nor had he shone decoratively at receptions. It

was in the breakers at Waikiki, in the wild cattle drive on Manna Kea, and in the breaking yard of the

She had not cared for the interminable statistics and eternal speechmaking of the other members of the

committee. Neither had Steve. And it was with Steve that she had stolen away from the openair feast at

Hamakua, and from Abe Louisson, the coffee planter, who had talked coffee, coffee, nothing but coffee, for

two mortal hours. It was then, as they rode among the tree ferns, that Steve had taught her the words of

"Aloha Oe," the song that had been sung to the visiting Senators at every village, ranch, and plantation

Steve and she had been much together from the first. He had been her playfellow. She had taken possession

of him while her father had been occupied in taking possession of the statistics of the island territory. She was

too gentle to tyrannize over her playfellow, yet she had ruled him abjectly, except when in canoe, or on horse

or surfboard, at which times he had taken charge and she had rendered obedience. And now, with this last

singing of the song, as the lines were cast off and the big transport began backing slowly out from the dock,

AGAIN,"and in that first moment of known love she realized that she and Steve were being torn apart.

When would they ever meet again? He had taught her those words himself. She remembered listening as he

sang them over and over under the hau tree at Waikiki. Had it been prophecy? And she had admired his

singing, had told him that he sang with such expression. She laughed aloud, hysterically, at the recollection.

With such expression!when he had been pouring his heart out in his voice. She knew now, and it was too

late. Why had he not spoken? Then she realized that girls of her age did not marry. But girls of her age did

marryin Hawaiiwas her instant thought. Hawaii had ripened herHawaii, where flesh is golden and

Vainly she scanned the packed multitude on the dock. What had become of him? She felt she could pay any

price for one more glimpse of him, and she almost hoped that some mortal sickness would strike the lonely

captain on the bridge and delay departure. For the first time in her life she looked at her father with a

calculating eye, and as she did she noted with newborn fear the lines of will and determination. It would be

terrible to oppose him. And what chance would she have in such a struggle? But why had Steve not spoken?

And then, with a great sinking of the heart, it came to her that she knew why. What was it she had heard one

day? Oh, yes, it was at Mrs. Stanton's tea, that afternoon when the ladies of the "Missionary Crowd" had

entertained the ladies of the Senatorial party. It was Mrs. Hodgkins, the tall blonde woman, who had asked

the question. The scene came back to her vividlythe broad lanai, the tropic flowers, the noiseless Asiatic

attendants, the hum of the voices of the many women and the question Mrs. Hodgkins had asked in the group

next to her. Mrs. Hodgkins had been away on the mainland for years, and was evidently inquiring after old

island friends of her maiden days. "What has become of Susie Maydwell?" was the question she had asked.

"Oh, we never see her any more; she married Willie Kupele," another island woman answered. And Senator

Behrend's wife laughed and wanted to know why matrimony had affected Susie Maydwell's friendships.

"Hapahaole," was the answer; "he was a halfcaste, you know, and we of the Islands have to think about our

"Papa, if Steve ever comes to the United States, mayn't he come and see us some time?"

"Yes, Stephen Knightyou know him. You said goodbye to him not five minutes ago. Mayn't he, if he

"Certainly not," Jeremy Sambrooke answered shortly. "Stephen Knight is a hapahaole and you know what

Steve was not a hapahaoleshe knew that; but she did not know that a quarterstrain of tropic sunshine

streamed in his veins, and she knew that that was sufficient to put him outside the marriage pale. It was a

strange world. There was the Honourable A. S. Cleghorn, who had married a dusky princess of the

Kamehameha blood, yet men considered it an honour to know him, and the most exclusive women of the

ultraexclusive "Missionary Crowd" were to be seen at his afternoon teas. And there was Steve. No one had

disapproved of his teaching her to ride a surfboard, nor of his leading her by the hand through the perilous

places of the crater of Kilauea. He could have dinner with her and her father, dance with her, and be a

member of the entertainment committee; but because there was tropic sunshine in his veins he could not

And he didn't show it. One had to be told to know. And he was so goodlooking. The picture of him limned

itself on her inner vision, and before she was aware she was pleasuring in the memory of the grace of his

magnificent body, of his splendid shoulders, of the power in him that tossed her lightly on a horse, bore her

safely through the thundering breakers, or towed her at the end of an alpenstock up the stern lava crest of the

House of the Sun. There was something subtler and mysterious that she remembered, and that she was even

then just beginning to understandthe aura of the male creature that is man, all man, masculine man. She

came to herself with a shock of shame at the thoughts she had been thinking. Her cheeks were dyed with the

hot blood which quickly receded and left them pale at the thought that she would never see him again. The

stem of the transport was already out in the stream, and the promenade deck was passing abreast of the end of

Steve was looking up at her with eager eyes, and he saw in her face what he had not seen before. By the rush

of gladness into his own face she knew that he knew. The air was throbbing with the song

There was no need for speech to tell their story. About her, passengers were flinging their garlands to their

friends on the dock. Steve held up his hands and his eyes pleaded. She slipped her own garland over her head,

but it had become entangled in the string of Oriental pearls that Mervin, an elderly sugar king, had placed

She fought with the pearls that clung to the flowers. The transport was moving steadily on. Steve was already

beneath her. This was the moment. The next moment and he would be past. She sobbed, and Jeremy

She deliberately snapped the string, and, amid a shower of pearls, the flowers fell to the waiting lover. She

gazed at him until the tears blinded her and she buried her face on the shoulder of Jeremy Sambrooke, who

forgot his beloved statistics in wonderment at girl babies that insisted on growing up. The crowd sang on, the

song growing fainter in the distance, but still melting with the sensuous lovelanguor of Hawaii, the words

Aloha oe, Aloha oe, e ke onaona no ho ika lipo, A fond embrace, ahoi ae au, until we meet again.

There was nothing striking in the appearance of Chun Ah Chun. He was rather undersized, as Chinese go, and

the Chinese narrow shoulders and spareness of flesh were his. The average tourist, casually glimpsing him on

the streets of Honolulu, would have concluded that he was a goodnatured little Chinese, probably the

proprietor of a prosperous laundry or tailorshop. In so far as good nature and prosperity went, the judgment

would be correct, though beneath the mark; for Ah Chun was as goodnatured as he was prosperous, and of

the latter no man knew a tithe the tale. It was well known that he was enormously wealthy, but in his case

Ah Chun had shrewd little eyes, black and beady and so very little that they were like gimletholes. But they

were wide apart, and they sheltered under a forehead that was patently the forehead of a thinker. For Ah Chun

had his problems, and had had them all his life. Not that he ever worried over them. He was essentially a

philosopher, and whether as coolie, or multimillionaire and master of many men, his poise of soul was the

same. He lived always in the high equanimity of spiritual repose, undeterred by good fortune, unruffled by ill

fortune. All things went well with him, whether they were blows from the overseer in the cane field or a

slump in the price of sugar when he owned those cane fields himself. Thus, from the steadfast rock of his sure

content he mastered problems such as are given to few men to consider, much less to a Chinese peasant.

He was precisely thata Chinese peasant, born to labour in the fields all his days like a beast, but fated to

escape from the fields like the prince in a fairy tale. Ah Chun did not remember his father, a small farmer in a

district not far from Canton; nor did he remember much of his mother, who had died when he was six. But he

did remember his respected uncle, Ah Kow, for him had he served as a slave from his sixth year to his

twentyfourth. It was then that he escaped by contracting himself as a coolie to labour for three years on the

Ah Chun was observant. He perceived little details that not one man in a thousand ever noticed. Three years

he worked in the field, at the end of which time he knew more about canegrowing than the overseers or

even the superintendent, while the superintendent would have been astounded at the knowledge the weazened

little coolie possessed of the reduction processes in the mill. But Ah Chun did not study only sugar processes.

He studied to find out how men came to be owners of sugar mills and plantations. One judgment he achieved

early, namely, that men did not become rich from the labour of their own hands. He knew, for he had

laboured for a score of years himself. The men who grew rich did so from the labour of the hands of others.

That man was richest who had the greatest number of his fellow creatures toiling for him.

So, when his term of contract was up, Ah Chun invested his savings in a small importing store, going into

partnership with one, Ah Yung. The firm ultimately became the great one of "Ah Chun and Ah Yung," which

handled anything from India silks and ginseng to guano islands and blackbird brigs. In the meantime, Ah

Chun hired out as cook. He was a good cook, and in three years he was the highest paid chef in Honolulu.

His career was assured, and he was a fool to abandon it, as Dantin, his employer, told him; but Ah Chun

knew his own mind best, and for knowing it was called a triplefool and given a present of fifty dollars over

The firm of Ah Chun and Ah Yung was prospering. There was no need for Ah Chun longer to be a cook.

There were boom times in Hawaii. Sugar was being extensively planted, and labour was needed. Ah Chun

saw the chance, and went into the labourimporting business. He brought thousands of Cantonese coolies

into Hawaii, and his wealth began to grow. He made investments. His beady black eyes saw bargains where

other men saw bankruptcy. He bought a fishpond for a song, which later paid five hundred per cent and was

the opening wedge by which he monopolized the fish market of Honolulu. He did not talk for publication, nor

figure in politics, nor play at revolutions, but he forecast events more clearly and farther ahead than did the

men who engineered them. In his mind's eye he saw Honolulu a modern, electriclighted city at a time when

it straggled, unkempt and sandtormented, over a barren reef of uplifted coral rock. So he bought land. He

bought land from merchants who needed ready cash, from impecunious natives, from riotous traders' sons,

from widows and orphans and the lepers deported to Molokai; and, somehow, as the years went by, the pieces

of land he had bought proved to be needed for warehouses, or coffee buildings, or hotels. He leased, and

But there were other things as well. He put his confidence and his money into Parkinson, the renegade

captain whom nobody would trust. And Parkinson sailed away on mysterious voyages in the little Vega.

Parkinson was taken care of until he died, and years afterward Honolulu was astonished when the news

leaked out that the Drake and Acorn guano islands had been sold to the British Phosphate Trust for

threequarters of a million. Then there were the fat, lush days of King Kalakaua, when Ah Chun paid three

hundred thousand dollars for the opium licence. If he paid a third of a million for the drug monopoly, the

investment was nevertheless a good one, for the dividends bought him the Kalalau Plantation, which, in turn,

paid him thirty per cent for seventeen years and was ultimately sold by him for a million and a half.

It was under the Kamehamehas, long before, that he had served his own country as Chinese Consula

position that was not altogether unlucrative; and it was under Kamehameha IV that he changed his

citizenship, becoming an Hawaiian subject in order to marry Stella Allendale, herself a subject of the

brownskinned king, though more of AngloSaxon blood ran in her veins than of Polynesian. In fact, the

random breeds in her were so attenuated that they were valued at eighths and sixteenths. In the latter

proportions was the blood of her greatgrandmother, Paahaothe Princess Paahao, for she came of the royal

line. Stella Allendale's greatgrandfather had been a Captain Blunt, an English adventurer who took service

under Kamehameha I and was made a tabu chief himself. Her grandfather had been a New Bedford whaling

captain, while through her own father had been introduced a remote blend of Italian and Portuguese which

had been grafted upon his own English stock. Legally a Hawaiian, Ah Chun's spouse was more of any one of

And into this conglomerate of the races, Ah Chun introduced the Mongolian mixture. Thus, his children by

Mrs. Ah Chun were one thirtysecond Polynesian, onesixteenth Italian, one sixteenth Portuguese, onehalf

Chinese, and eleven thirtyseconds English and American. It might well be that Ah Chun would have

refrained from matrimony could he have foreseen the wonderful family that was to spring from this union. It

was wonderful in many ways. First, there was its size. There were fifteen sons and daughters, mostly

daughters. The sons had come first, three of them, and then had followed, in unswerving sequence, a round

dozen of girls. The blend of the race was excellent. Not alone fruitful did it prove, for the progeny, without

exception, was healthy and without blemish. But the most amazing thing about the family was its beauty. All

the girls were beautifuldelicately, ethereally beautiful. Mamma Ah Chun's rotund lines seemed to modify

papa Ah Chun's lean angles, so that the daughters were willowy without being lathy, roundmuscled without

being chubby. In every feature of every face were haunting reminiscences of Asia, all manipulated over and

disguised by Old England, New England, and South of Europe. No observer, without information, would

have guessed, the heavy Chinese strain in their veins; nor could any observer, after being informed, fail to

As beauties, the Ah Chun girls were something new. Nothing like them had been seen before. They

resembled nothing so much as they resembled one another, and yet each girl was sharply individual. There

was no mistaking one for another. On the other hand, Maud, who was blueeyed and yellowhaired, would

remind one instantly of Henrietta, an olive brunette with large, languishing dark eyes and hair that was

blueblack. The hint of resemblance that ran through them all, reconciling every differentiation, was Ah

Chun's contribution. He had furnished the groundwork upon which had been traced the blended patterns of

the races. He had furnished the slimboned Chinese frame, upon which had been builded the delicacies and

Mrs. Ah Chun had ideas of her own to which Ah Chun gave credence, though never permitting them

expression when they conflicted with his own philosophic calm. She had been used all her life to living in

European fashion. Very well. Ah Chun gave her a European mansion. Later, as his sons and daughters grew

able to advise, he built a bungalow, a spacious, rambling affair, as unpretentious as it was magnificent. Also,

as time went by, there arose a mountain house on Tantalus, to which the family could flee when the "sick

wind" blew from the south. And at Waikiki he built a beach residence on an extensive site so well chosen that

later on, when the United States government condemned it for fortification purposes, an immense sum

accompanied the condemnation. In all his houses were billiard and smoking rooms and guest rooms galore,

for Ah Chun's wonderful progeny was given to lavish entertainment. The furnishing was extravagantly

simple. Kings' ransoms were expended without displaythanks to the educated tastes of the progeny.

Ah Chun had been liberal in the matter of education. "Never mind expense," he had argued in the old days

with Parkinson when that slack mariner could see no reason for making the Vega seaworthy; "you sail the

schooner, I pay the bills." And so with his sons and daughters. It had been for them to get the education and

never mind the expense. Harold, the eldestborn, had gone to Harvard and Oxford; Albert and Charles had

gone through Yale in the same classes. And the daughters, from the eldest down, had undergone their

preparation at Mills Seminary in California and passed on to Vassar, Wellesley, or Bryn Mawr. Several,

having so desired, had had the finishing touches put on in Europe. And from all the world Ah Chun's sons

and daughters returned to him to suggest and advise in the garnishment of the chaste magnificence of his

residences. Ah Chun himself preferred the voluptuous glitter of Oriental display; but he was a philosopher,

and he clearly saw that his children's tastes were correct according to Western standards.

Of course, his children were not known as the Ah Chun children. As he had evolved from a coolie labourer to

a multimillionaire, so had his name evolved. Mamma Ah Chun had spelled it A'Chun, but her wiser

offspring had elided the apostrophe and spelled it Achun. Ah Chun did not object. The spelling of his name

interfered no whit with his comfort nor his philosophic calm. Besides, he was not proud. But when his

children arose to the height of a starched shirt, a stiff collar, and a frock coat, they did interfere with his

comfort and calm. Ah Chun would have none of it. He preferred the looseflowing robes of China, and

neither could they cajole nor bully him into making the change. They tried both courses, and in the latter one

failed especially disastrously. They had not been to America for nothing. They had learned the virtues of the

boycott as employed by organized labour, and he, their father, Chun Ah Chun, they boycotted in his own

house, Mamma Achun aiding and abetting. But Ah Chun himself, while unversed in Western culture, was

thoroughly conversant with Western labour conditions. An extensive employer of labour himself, he knew

how to cope with its tactics. Promptly he imposed a lockout on his rebellious progeny and erring spouse. He

discharged his scores of servants, locked up his stables, closed his houses, and went to live in the Royal

Hawaiian Hotel, in which enterprise he happened to be the heaviest stockholder. The family fluttered

distractedly on visits about with friends, while Ah Chun calmly managed his many affairs, smoked his long

pipe with the tiny silver bowl, and pondered the problem of his wonderful progeny.

This problem did not disturb his calm. He knew in his philosopher's soul that when it was ripe he would solve

it. In the meantime he enforced the lesson that complacent as he might be, he was nevertheless the absolute

dictator of the Achun destinies. The family held out for a week, then returned, along with Ah Chun and the

many servants, to occupy the bungalow once more. And thereafter no question was raised when Ah Chun

elected to enter his brilliant drawingroom in blue silk robe, wadded slippers, and black silk skullcap with

red button peak, or when he chose to draw at his slenderstemmed silverbowled pipe among the cigarette

and cigar smoking officers and civilians on the broad verandas or in the smoking room.

Ah Chun occupied a unique position in Honolulu. Though he did not appear in society, he was eligible

anywhere. Except among the Chinese merchants of the city, he never went out; but he received, and he

always was the centre of his household and the head of his table. Himself peasant, born Chinese, he presided

over an atmosphere of culture and refinement second to none in all the islands. Nor were there any in all the

islands too proud to cross his threshold and enjoy his hospitality. First of all, the Achun bungalow was of

irreproachable tone. Next, Ah Chun was a power. And finally, Ah Chun was a moral paragon and an honest

business man. Despite the fact that business morality was higher than on the mainland, Ah Chun outshone the

business men of Honolulu in the scrupulous rigidity of his honesty. It was a saying that his word was as good

as his bond. His signature was never needed to bind him. He never broke his word. Twenty years after

Hotchkiss, of Hotchkiss, Morterson Company, died, they found among mislaid papers a memorandum of a

loan of thirty thousand dollars to Ah Chun. It had been incurred when Ah Chun was Privy Councillor to

Kamehameha II. In the bustle and confusion of those heyday, moneymaking times, the affair had slipped Ah

Chun's mind. There was no note, no legal claim against him, but he settled in full with the Hotchkiss' Estate,

voluntarily paying a compound interest that dwarfed the principal. Likewise, when he verbally guaranteed the

disastrous Kakiku Ditch Scheme, at a time when the least sanguine did not dream a guarantee

necessary"Signed his cheque for two hundred thousand without a quiver, gentlemen, without a quiver,"

was the report of the secretary of the defunct enterprise, who had been sent on the forlorn hope of finding out

Ah Chun's intentions. And on top of the many similar actions that were true of his word, there was scarcely a

man of repute in the islands that at one time or another had not experienced the helping financial hand of Ah

So it was that Honolulu watched his wonderful family grow up into a perplexing problem and secretly

sympathized with him, for it was beyond any of them to imagine what he was going to do with it. But Ah

Chun saw the problem more clearly than they. No one knew as he knew the extent to which he was an alien

in his family. His own family did not guess it. He saw that there was no place for him amongst this

marvellous seed of his loins, and he looked forward to his declining years and knew that he would grow more

and more alien. He did not understand his children. Their conversation was of things that did not interest him

and about which he knew nothing. The culture of the West had passed him by. He was Asiatic to the last

fibre, which meant that he was heathen. Their Christianity was to him so much nonsense. But all this he

would have ignored as extraneous and irrelevant, could he have but understood the young people themselves.

When Maud, for instance, told him that the housekeeping bills for the month were thirty thousandthat he

understood, as he understood Albert's request for five thousand with which to buy the schooner yacht Muriel

and become a member of the Hawaiian Yacht Club. But it was their remoter, complicated desires and mental

processes that obfuscated him. He was not slow in learning that the mind of each son and daughter was a

secret labyrinth which he could never hope to tread. Always he came upon the wall that divides East from

West. Their souls were inaccessible to him, and by the same token he knew that his soul was inaccessible to

Besides, as the years came upon him, he found himself harking back more and more to his own kind. The

reeking smells of the Chinese quarter were spicy to him. He sniffed them with satisfaction as he passed along

the street, for in his mind they carried him back to the narrow tortuous alleys of Canton swarming with life

and movement. He regretted that he had cut off his queue to please Stella Allendale in the prenuptial days,

and he seriously considered the advisability of shaving his crown and growing a new one. The dishes his

highly paid chef concocted for him failed to tickle his reminiscent palate in the way that the weird messes did

in the stuffy restaurant down in the Chinese quarter. He enjoyed vastly more a halfhour's smoke and chat

with two or three Chinese chums, than to preside at the lavish and elegant dinners for which his bungalow

was famed, where the pick of the Americans and Europeans sat at the long table, men and women on

equality, the women with jewels that blazed in the subdued light against white necks and arms, the men in

evening dress, and all chattering and laughing over topics and witticisms that, while they were not exactly

But it was not merely his alienness and his growing desire to return to his Chinese fleshpots that constituted

the problem. There was also his wealth. He had looked forward to a placid old age. He had worked hard. His

reward should have been peace and repose. But he knew that with his immense fortune peace and repose

could not possibly be his. Already there were signs and omens. He had seen similar troubles before. There

was his old employer, Dantin, whose children had wrested from him, by due process of law, the management

of his property, having the Court appoint guardians to administer it for him. Ah Chun knew, and knew

thoroughly well, that had Dantin been a poor man, it would have been found that he could quite rationally

manage his own affairs. And old Dantin had had only three children and half a million, while he, Chun Ah

"Our daughters are beautiful women," he said to his wife, one evening. "There are many young men. The

house is always full of young men. My cigar bills are very heavy. Why are there no marriages?"

"Women are women and men are menit is strange there are no marriages. Perhaps the young men do not

"Ah, they like them well enough," Mamma Chun answered; "but you see, they cannot forget that you are

"Yet you forgot who my father was," Ah Chun said gravely. "All you asked was for me to cut off my queue."

"What is the greatest thing in the world?" Ah Chun demanded with abrupt irrelevance.

He nodded. "There are gods and gods. Some are paper, some are wood, some are bronze. I use a small one in

the office for a paper weight. In the Bishop Museum are many gods of coral rock and lava stone."

"But there is only one God," she announced decisively, stiffening her ample frame argumentatively.

"What is greater than God, then?" he asked. "I will tell you. It is money. In my time I have had dealings with

Jews and Christians, Mohammedans and Buddhists, and with little black men from the Solomons and New

Guinea who carried their god about them, wrapped in oiled paper. They possessed various gods, these men,

but they all worshipped money. There is that Captain Higginson. He seems to like Henrietta."

"He will never marry her," retorted Mamma Achun. "He will be an admiral before he dies"

"His family in the United States is a high one. They would not like it if he married . . . if he did not marry an

Ah Chun knocked the ashes out of his pipe, thoughtfully refilling the silver bowl with a tiny pleget of

"Henrietta is the oldest girl. The day she marries I will give her three hundred thousand dollars. That will

fetch that Captain Higginson and his high family along with him. Let the word go out to him. I leave it to

And Ah Chun sat and smoked on, and in the curling smokewreaths he saw take shape the face and figure of

Toy ShueyToy Shuey, the maid of all work in his uncle's house in the Cantonese village, whose work was

never done and who received for a whole year's work one dollar. And he saw his youthful self arise in the

curling smoke, his youthful self who had toiled eighteen years in his uncle's field for little more. And now he,

Ah Chun, the peasant, dowered his daughter with three hundred thousand years of such toil. And she was but

one daughter of a dozen. He was not elated at the thought. It struck him that it was a funny, whimsical world,

and he chuckled aloud and startled Mamma Achun from a revery which he knew lay deep in the hidden

But Ah Chun's word went forth, as a whisper, and Captain Higginson forgot his rearadmiralship and his

high family and took to wife three hundred thousand dollars and a refined and cultured girl who was one

thirtysecond Polynesian, onesixteenth Italian, one sixteenth Portuguese, eleven thirtyseconds English

Ah Chun's munificence had its effect. His daughters became suddenly eligible and desirable. Clara was the

next, but when the Secretary of the Territory formally proposed for her, Ah Chun informed him that he must

wait his turn, that Maud was the oldest and that she must be married first. It was shrewd policy. The whole

family was made vitally interested in marrying off Maud, which it did in three months, to Ned Humphreys,

the United States immigration commissioner. Both he and Maud complained, for the dowry was only two

hundred thousand. Ah Chun explained that his initial generosity had been to break the ice, and that after that

Clara followed Maud, and thereafter, for a space of two years; there was a continuous round of weddings in

the bungalow. In the meantime Ah Chun had not been idle. Investment after investment was called in. He

sold out his interests in a score of enterprises, and step by step, so as not to cause a slump in the market, he

disposed of his large holdings in real estate. Toward the last he did precipitate a slump and sold at sacrifice.

What caused this haste were the squalls he saw already rising above the horizon. By the time Lucille was

married, echoes of bickerings and jealousies were already rumbling in his ears. The air was thick with

schemes and counterschemes to gain his favour and to prejudice him against one or another or all but one of

his sonsinlaw. All of which was not conducive to the peace and repose he had planned for his old age.

He hastened his efforts. For a long time he had been in correspondence with the chief banks in Shanghai and

Macao. Every steamer for several years had carried away drafts drawn in favour of one, Chun Ah Chun, for

deposit in those Far Eastern banks. The drafts now became heavier. His two youngest daughters were not yet

married. He did not wait, but dowered them with a hundred thousand each, which sums lay in the Bank of

Hawaii, drawing interest and awaiting their wedding day. Albert took over the business of the firm of Ah

Chun and Ah Yung, Harold, the eldest, having elected to take a quarter of a million and go to England to live.

Charles, the youngest, took a hundred thousand, a legal guardian, and a course in a Keeley institute. To

Mamma Achun was given the bungalow, the mountain House on Tantalus, and a new seaside residence in

place of the one Ah Chun sold to the government. Also, to Mamma Achun was given half a million in money

Ah Chun was now ready to crack the nut of the problem. One fine morning when the family was at

breakfasthe had seen to it that all his sonsinlaw and their wives were presenthe announced that he

was returning to his ancestral soil. In a neat little homily he explained that he had made ample provision for

his family, and he laid down various maxims that he was sure, he said, would enable them to dwell together

in peace and harmony. Also, he gave business advice to his sonsinlaw, preached the virtues of temperate

living and safe investments, and gave them the benefit of his encyclopedic knowledge of industrial and

business conditions in Hawaii. Then he called for his carriage, and, in the company of the weeping Mamma

Achun, was driven down to the Pacific Mail steamer, leaving behind him a panic in the bungalow. Captain

Higginson clamoured wildly for an injunction. The daughters shed copious tears. One of their husbands, an

exFederal judge, questioned Ah Chun's sanity, and hastened to the proper authorities to inquire into it. He

returned with the information that Ah Chun had appeared before the commission the day before, demanded

an examination, and passed with flying colours. There was nothing to be done, so they went down and said

goodbye to the little old man, who waved farewell from the promenade deck as the big steamer poked her

But the little old man was not bound for Canton. He knew his own country too well, and the squeeze of the

Mandarins, to venture into it with the tidy bulk of wealth that remained to him. He went to Macao. Now Ah

Chun had long exercised the power of a king and he was as imperious as a king. When he landed at Macao

and went into the office of the biggest European hotel to register, the clerk closed the book on him. Chinese

were not permitted. Ah Chun called for the manager and was treated with contumely. He drove away, but in

two hours he was back again. He called the clerk and manager in, gave them a month's salary, and discharged

them. He had made himself the owner of the hotel; and in the finest suite he settled down during the many

months the gorgeous palace in the suburbs was building for him. In the meantime, with the inevitable ability

that was his, he increased the earnings of his big hotel from three per cent to thirty.

The troubles Ah Chun had flown began early. There were sonsinlaw that made bad investments, others

that played ducks and drakes with the Achun dowries. Ah Chun being out of it, they looked at Mamma Ah

Chun and her half million, and, looking, engendered not the best of feeling toward one another. Lawyers

waxed fat in the striving to ascertain the construction of trust deeds. Suits, crosssuits, and countersuits

cluttered the Hawaiian courts. Nor did the police courts escape. There were angry encounters in which harsh

words and harsher blows were struck. There were such things as flower pots being thrown to add emphasis to

winged words. And suits for libel arose that dragged their way through the courts and kept Honolulu agog

In his palace, surrounded by all dear delights of the Orient, Ah Chun smokes his placid pipe and listens to the

turmoil overseas. By each mail steamer, in faultless English, typewritten on an American machine, a letter

goes from Macao to Honolulu, in which, by admirable texts and precepts, Ah Chun advises his family to live

in unity and harmony. As for himself, he is out of it all, and well content. He has won to peace and repose. At

times he chuckles and rubs his hands, and his slant little black eyes twinkle merrily at the thought of the

funny world. For out of all his living and philosophizing, that remains to himthe conviction that it is a very

"You cannot escape liking the climate," Cudworth said, in reply to my panegyric on the Kona coast. "I was a

young fellow, just out of college, when I came here eighteen years ago. I never went back, except, of course,

to visit. And I warn you, if you have some spot dear to you on earth, not to linger here too long, else you will

We had finished dinner, which had been served on the big lanai, the one with a northerly exposure, though

The candles had been put out, and a slim, whiteclad Japanese slipped like a ghost through the silvery

moonlight, presented us with cigars, and faded away into the darkness of the bungalow. I looked through a

screen of banana and lehua trees, and down across the guava scrub to the quiet sea a thousand feet beneath.

For a week, ever since I had landed from the tiny coastingsteamer, I had been stopping with Cudworth, and

during that time no wind had ruffled that unvexed sea. True, there had been breezes, but they were the

gentlest zephyrs that ever blew through summer isles. They were not winds; they were sighslong, balmy

"Where each day is like every day, and every day is a paradise of days," he answered. "Nothing ever happens.

It is not too hot. It is not too cold. It is always just right. Have you noticed how the land and the sea breathe

Indeed, I had noticed that delicious rhythmic, breathing. Each morning I had watched the seabreeze begin at

the shore and slowly extend seaward as it blew the mildest, softest whiff of ozone to the land. It played over

the sea, just faintly darkening its surface, with here and there and everywhere long lanes of calm, shifting,

changing, drifting, according to the capricious kisses of the breeze. And each evening I had watched the sea

breath die away to heavenly calm, and heard the land breath softly make its way through the coffee trees and

"It is a land of perpetual calm," I said. "Does it ever blow here? ever really blow? You know what I mean."

Far above towered the huge bulks of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, seeming to blot out half the starry sky. Two

miles and a half above our heads they reared their own heads, white with snow that the tropic sun had failed

Cudworth stepped to the lanai telephone. He called up, in succession, Waimea, Kohala, and Hamakua.

Snatches of his conversation told me that the wind was blowing: "Ripsnorting and backjumping, eh? . . .

How long? . . . Only a week? . . . Hello, Abe, is that you? . . . Yes, yes . . . You WILL plant coffee on the

"Blowing a gale," he said to me, turning from hanging up the receiver. "I always have to joke Abe on his

coffee. He has five hundred acres, and he's done marvels in windbreaking, but how he keeps the roots in the

ground is beyond me. Blow? It always blows on the Hamakua side. Kohala reports a schooner under double

reefs beating up the channel between Hawaii and Maui, and making heavy weather of it."

"It is hard to realize," I said lamely. "Doesn't a little whiff of it ever eddy around somehow, and get down

"Not a whiff. Our landbreeze is absolutely of no kin, for it begins this side of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa.

You see, the land radiates its heat quicker than the sea, and so, at night, the land breathes over the sea. In the

day the land becomes warmer than the sea, and the sea breathes over the land . . . Listen! Here comes the

I could hear it coming, rustling softly through the coffee trees, stirring the monkeypods, and sighing through

the sugarcane. On the lanai the hush still reigned. Then it came, the first feel of the mountain wind, faintly

balmy, fragrant and spicy, and cool, deliciously cool, a silken coolness, a winelike coolnesscool as only

"Do you wonder that I lost my heart to Kona eighteen years ago?" he demanded. "I could never leave it now.

I think I should die. It would be terrible. There was another man who loved it, even as I. I think he loved it

more, for he was born here on the Kona coast. He was a great man, my best friend, my more than brother. But

He paused and gazed down upon the beachlights of Kailua. I smoked silently and waited.

"He was already in love . . . with his wife. Also, he had three children, and he loved them. They are in

He shook his head. "Neither guilty of anything criminal, nor charged with anything criminal. He was the

"I suppose it does sound that way," he admitted, "and that is the perfect hell of it."

"He was a leper. No, he was not born with itno one is born with it; it came upon him. This manwhat

does it matter? Lyte Gregory was his name. Every kamaina knows the story. He was straight American stock,

but he was built like the chieftains of old Hawaii. He stood six feet three. His stripped weight was two

hundred and twenty pounds, not an ounce of which was not clean muscle or bone. He was the strongest man I

have ever seen. He was an athlete and a giant. He was a god. He was my friend. And his heart and his soul

"I wonder what you would do if you saw your friend, your brother, on the slippery lip of a precipice, slipping,

slipping, and you were able to do nothing. That was just it. I could do nothing. I saw it coming, and I could

do nothing. My God, man, what could I do? There it was, malignant and incontestable, the mark of the thing

on his brow. No one else saw it. It was because I loved him so, I do believe, that I alone saw it. I could not

credit the testimony of my senses. It was too incredibly horrible. Yet there it was, on his brow, on his ears. I

had seen it, the slight puff of the earlobesoh, so imperceptibly slight. I watched it for months. Then, next,

hoping against hope, the darkening of the skin above both eyebrowsoh, so faint, just like the dimmest

touch of sunburn. I should have thought it sunburn but that there was a shine to it, such an invisible shine,

like a little highlight seen for a moment and gone the next. I tried to believe it was sunburn, only I could not. I

knew better. No one noticed it but me. No one ever noticed it except Stephen Kaluna, and I did not know that

till afterward. But I saw it coming, the whole damnable, unnamable awfulness of it; but I refused to think

"He was my friend. We fished sharks on Niihau together. We hunted wild cattle on Mauna Kea and Mauna

Loa. We broke horses and branded steers on the Carter Ranch. We hunted goats through Haleakala. He taught

me diving and surfing until I was nearly as clever as he, and he was cleverer than the average Kanaka. I have

seen him dive in fifteen fathoms, and he could stay down two minutes. He was an amphibian and a

mountaineer. He could climb wherever a goat dared climb. He was afraid of nothing. He was on the wrecked

Luga, and he swam thirty miles in thirtysix hours in a heavy sea. He could fight his way out through

breaking combers that would batter you and me to a jelly. He was a great, glorious mangod. We went

through the Revolution together. We were both romantic loyalists. He was shot twice and sentenced to death.

But he was too great a man for the republicans to kill. He laughed at them. Later, they gave him honour and

made him Sheriff of Kona. He was a simple man, a boy that never grew up. His was no intricate brain pattern.

He had no twists nor quirks in his mental processes. He went straight to the point, and his points were always

"And he was sanguine. Never have I known so confident a man, nor a man so satisfied and happy. He did not

ask anything from life. There was nothing left to be desired. For him life had no arrears. He had been paid in

full, cash down, and in advance. What more could he possibly desire than that magnificent body, that iron

constitution, that immunity from all ordinary ills, and that lowly wholesomeness of soul? Physically he was

perfect. He had never been sick in his life. He did not know what a headache was. When I was so afflicted he

used to look at me in wonder, and make me laugh with his clumsy attempts at sympathy. He did not

understand such a thing as a headache. He could not understand. Sanguine? No wonder. How could he be

"Just to show you what faith he had in his glorious star, and, also, what sanction he had for that faith. He was

a youngster at the timeI had just met himwhen he went into a poker game at Wailuku. There was a big

German in it, Schultz his name was, and he played a brutal, domineering game. He had had a run of luck as

well, and he was quite insufferable, when Lyte Gregory dropped in and took a hand. The very first hand it

was Schultz's blind. Lyte came in, as well as the others, and Schultz raised them outall except Lyte. He did

not like the German's tone, and he raised him back. Schultz raised in turn, and in turn Lyte raised Schultz. So

they went, back and forth. The stakes were big. And do you know what Lyte held? A pair of kings and three

little clubs. It wasn't poker. Lyte wasn't playing poker. He was playing his optimism. He didn't know what

Schultz held, but he raised and raised until he made Schultz squeal, and Schultz held three aces all the time.

Think of it! A man with a pair of kings compelling three aces to see before the draw!

"Well, Schultz called for two cards. Another German was dealing, Schultz's friend at that. Lyte knew then

that he was up against three of a kind. Now what did he do? What would you have done? Drawn three cards

and held up the kings, of course. Not Lyte. He was playing optimism. He threw the kings away, held up the

three little clubs, and drew two cards. He never looked at them. He looked across at Schultz to bet, and

Schultz did bet, big. Since he himself held three aces he knew he had Lyte, because he played Lyte for threes,

and, necessarily, they would have to be smaller threes. Poor Schultz! He was perfectly correct under the

premises. His mistake was that he thought Lyte was playing poker. They bet back and forth for five minutes,

until Schultz's certainty began to ooze out. And all the time Lyte had never looked at his two cards, and

Schultz knew it. I could see Schultz think, and revive, and splurge with his bets again. But the strain was too

"'Hold on, Gregory,' he said at last. 'I've got you beaten from the start. I don't want any of your money. I've

"'Never mind what you've got,' Lyte interrupted. 'You don't know what I've got. I guess I'll take a look.'"

"He looked, and raised the German a hundred dollars. Then they went at it again, back and forth and back and

forth, until Schultz weakened and called, and laid down his three aces. Lyte faced his five cards. They were

all black. He had drawn two more clubs. Do you know, he just about broke Schultz's nerve as a poker player.

He never played in the same form again. He lacked confidence after that, and was a bit wobbly."

"'But how could you do it?' I asked Lyte afterwards. 'You knew he had you beaten when he drew two cards.

"'I didn't have to look,' was Lyte's answer. 'I knew they were two clubs all the time. They just had to be two

clubs. Do you think I was going to let that big Dutchman beat me? It was impossible that he should beat me.

It is not my way to be beaten. I just have to win. Why, I'd have been the most surprised man in this world if

"That was Lyte's way, and maybe it will help you to appreciate his colossal optimism. As he put it he just had

to succeed, to fare well, to prosper. And in that same incident, as in ten thousand others, he found his

sanction. The thing was that he did succeed, did prosper. That was why he was afraid of nothing. Nothing

could ever happen to him. He knew it, because nothing had ever happened to him. That time the Luga was

lost and he swam thirty miles, he was in the water two whole nights and a day. And during all that terrible

stretch of time he never lost hope once, never once doubted the outcome. He just knew he was going to make

"Well, that is the kind of a man Lyte Gregory was. He was of a different race from ordinary, ailing mortals.

He was a lordly being, untouched by common ills and misfortunes. Whatever he wanted he got. He won his

wifeone of the Caruthers, a little beauty from a dozen rivals. And she settled down and made him the

finest wife in the world. He wanted a boy. He got it. He wanted a girl and another boy. He got them. And

they were just right, without spot or blemish, with chests like little barrels, and with all the inheritance of his

"And then it happened. The mark of the beast was laid upon him. I watched it for a year. It broke my heart.

But he did not know it, nor did anybody else guess it except that cursed hapahaole, Stephen Kaluna. He

knew it, but I did not know that he did. AndyesDoc Strowbridge knew it. He was the federal physician,

and he had developed the leper eye. You see, part of his business was to examine suspects and order them to

the receiving station at Honolulu. And Stephen Kaluna had developed the leper eye. The disease ran strong in

"The trouble arose over Stephen Kaluna's sister. When she became suspect, and before Doc Strowbridge

could get hold of her, her brother spirited her away to some hidingplace. Lyte was Sheriff of Kona, and it

"We were all over at Hilo that night, in Ned Austin's. Stephen Kaluna was there when we came in, by

himself, in his cups, and quarrelsome. Lyte was laughing over some jokethat huge, happy laugh of a giant

boy. Kaluna spat contemptuously on the floor. Lyte noticed, so did everybody; but he ignored the fellow.

Kaluna was looking for trouble. He took it as a personal grudge that Lyte was trying to apprehend his sister.

In half a dozen ways he advertised his displeasure at Lyte's presence, but Lyte ignored him. I imagined Lyte

was a bit sorry for him, for the hardest duty of his office was the apprehension of lepers. It is not a nice thing

to go in to a man's house and tear away a father, mother, or child, who has done no wrong, and to send such a

one to perpetual banishment on Molokai. Of course, it is necessary as a protection to society, and Lyte, I do

believe, would have been the first to apprehend his own father did he become suspect.

"Finally, Kaluna blurted out: 'Look here, Gregory, you think you're going to find Kalaniweo, but you're not.'

"Kalaniweo was his sister. Lyte glanced at him when his name was called, but he made no answer. Kaluna

"'I'll tell you one thing,' he shouted. 'You'll be on Molokai yourself before ever you get Kalaniweo there. I'll

tell you what you are. You've no right to be in the company of honest men. You've made a terrible fuss

talking about your duty, haven't you? You've sent many lepers to Molokai, and knowing all the time you

"I'd seen Lyte angry more than once, but never quite so angry as at that moment. Leprosy with us, you know,

is not a thing to jest about. He made one leap across the floor, dragging Kaluna out of his chair with a clutch

on his neck. He shook him back and forth savagely, till you could hear the halfcaste's teeth rattling.

"'What do you mean?' Lyte was demanding. 'Spit it out, man, or I'll choke it out of you!'

"You know, in the West there is a certain phrase that a man must smile while uttering. So with us of the

islands, only our phrase is related to leprosy. No matter what Kaluna was, he was no coward. As soon as Lyte

Lyte suddenly flung the halfcaste sideways into a chair, letting him down easily enough. Then Lyte broke

out into honest, hearty laughter. But he laughed alone, and when he discovered it he looked around at our

faces. I had reached his side and was trying to get him to come away, but he took no notice of me. He was

gazing, fascinated, at Kaluna, who was brushing at his own throat in a flurried, nervous way, as if to brush off

the contamination of the fingers that had clutched him. The action was unreasoned, genuine.

"He did not speak it. It was more a hoarse whisper of fright and horror. It was fear that fluttered in his throat,

"'A good jokewhoever put it up,' he said. 'The drinks are on me. I had a scare for a moment. But, fellows,

don't do it again, to anybody. It's too serious. I tell you I died a thousand deaths in that moment. I thought of

"His voice broke, and the halfcaste, still throatbrushing, drew his eyes. He was puzzled and worried.

"His jovial, rotund voice rang in my ears. But I could not answer. I was swallowing hard at that moment, and

"He called timidly, and of all nightmares of horrors the most frightful was to hear timidity in Lyte Gregory's

"'John, John, what does it mean?' he went on, still more timidly. 'It's a joke, isn't it? John, here's my hand. If I

"He held out his hand, and what in high heaven or hell did I care? He was my friend. I took his hand, though

"'It was only a joke, Lyte,' I said. 'We fixed it up on you. But you're right. It's too serious. We won't do it

"He did not laugh this time. He smiled, as a man awakened from a bad dream and still oppressed by the

"'All right, then,' he said. 'Don't do it again, and I'll stand for the drinks. But I may as well confess that you

"He sighed and wiped the sweat from his forehead as he started to step toward the bar.

"'It is no joke,' Kaluna said abruptly. I looked murder at him, and I felt murder, too. But I dared not speak or

strike. That would have precipitated the catastrophe which I somehow had a mad hope of still averting.

"'It is no joke,' Kaluna repeated. 'You are a leper, Lyte Gregory, and you've no right putting your hands on

"'The joke has gone far enough! Quit it! Quit it, I say, Kaluna, or I'll give you a beating!'

"'You undergo a bacteriological examination,' Kaluna answered, 'and then you can beat meto death, if you

want to. Why, man, look at yourself there in the glass. You can see it. Anybody can see it. You're developing

"'I can see nothing,' he said finally, then turned on the hapa haole. 'You have a black heart, Kaluna. And I

am not ashamed to say that you have given me a scare that no man has a right to give another. I take you at

your word. I am going to settle this thing now. I am going straight to Doc Strowbridge. And when I come

"They looked at me, and I nodded. Harry Burnley lifted his glass to his lips, but lowered it untasted. He

spilled half of it over the bar. His lips were trembling like a child that is about to cry. Ned Austin made a

clatter in the icechest. He wasn't looking for anything. I don't think he knew what he was doing. Nobody

spoke. Harry Burnley's lips were trembling harder than ever. Suddenly, with a most horrible, malignant

expression he drove his fist into Kaluna's face. He followed it up. We made no attempt to separate them. We

didn't care if he killed the halfcaste. It was a terrible beating. We weren't interested. I don't even remember

"Doc Strowbridge told me about it afterward. He was working late over a report when Lyte came into his

office. Lyte had already recovered his optimism, and came swinging in, a trifle angry with Kaluna to be sure,

but very certain of himself. 'What could I do?' Doc asked me. 'I knew he had it. I had seen it coming on for

months. I couldn't answer him. I couldn't say yes. I don't mind telling you I broke down and cried. He pleaded

for the bacteriological test. "Snip out a piece, Doc," he said, over and over. "Snip out a piece of skin and

"The way Doc Strowbridge cried must have convinced Lyte. The Claudine was leaving next morning for

Honolulu. We caught him when he was going aboard. You see, he was headed for Honolulu to give himself

up to the Board of Health. We could do nothing with him. He had sent too many to Molokai to hang back

himself. We argued for Japan. But he wouldn't hear of it. 'I've got to take my medicine, fellows,' was all he

"He wound up all his affairs from the Receiving Station at Honolulu, and went down to Molokai. He didn't

get on well there. The resident physician wrote us that he was a shadow of his old self. You see he was

grieving about his wife and the kids. He knew we were taking care of them, but it hurt him just the same.

After six months or so I went down to Molokai. I sat on one side a plate glass window, and he on the other.

We looked at each other through the glass and talked through what might be called a speaking tube. But it

was hopeless. He had made up his mind to remain. Four mortal hours I argued. I was exhausted at the end.

"But we couldn't stand for it. Three months later we chartered the schooner Halcyon. She was an opium

smuggler, and she sailed like a witch. Her master was a squarehead who would do anything for money, and

we made a charter to China worth his while. He sailed from San Francisco, and a few days later we took out

Landhouse's sloop for a cruise. She was only a fiveton yacht, but we slammed her fifty miles to windward

into the northeast trade. Seasick? I never suffered so in my life. Out of sight of land we picked up the

"We ran down to Molokai, arriving about eleven at night. The schooner hove to and we landed through the

surf in a whaleboat at Kalawaothe place, you know, where Father Damien died. That squarehead was

game. With a couple of revolvers strapped on him he came right along. The three of us crossed the peninsula

to Kalaupapa, something like two miles. Just imagine hunting in the dead of night for a man in a settlement of

over a thousand lepers. You see, if the alarm was given, it was all off with us. It was strange ground, and

pitch dark. The leper's dogs came out and bayed at us, and we stumbled around till we got lost.

"The squarehead solved it. He led the way into the first detached house. We shut the door after us and struck

a light. There were six lepers. We routed them up, and I talked in native. What I wanted was a kokua. A

kokua is, literally, a helper, a native who is clean that lives in the settlement and is paid by the Board of

Health to nurse the lepers, dress their sores, and such things. We stayed in the house to keep track of the

inmates, while the squarehead led one of them off to find a kokua. He got him, and he brought him along at

the point of his revolver. But the kokua was all right. While the squarehead guarded the house, Burnley and I

"'I thought you fellows would come,' Lyte said. 'Don't touch me, John. How's Ned, and Charley, and all the

crowd? Never mind, tell me afterward. I am ready to go now. I've had nine months of it. Where's the boat?'

"We started back for the other house to pick up the squarehead. But the alarm had got out. Lights were

showing in the houses, and doors were slamming. We had agreed that there was to be no shooting unless

absolutely necessary, and when we were halted we went at it with our fists and the butts of our revolvers. I

found myself tangled up with a big man. I couldn't keep him off me, though twice I smashed him fairly in the

face with my fist. He grappled with me, and we went down, rolling and scrambling and struggling for grips.

He was getting away with me, when some one came running up with a lantern. Then I saw his face. How

shall I describe the horror of it. It was not a faceonly wasted or wasting featuresa living ravage,

noseless, lipless, with one ear swollen and distorted, hanging down to the shoulder. I was frantic. In a clinch

he hugged me close to him until that ear flapped in my face. Then I guess I went insane. It was too terrible. I

began striking him with my revolver. How it happened I don't know, but just as I was getting clear he

fastened upon me with his teeth. The whole side of my hand was in that lipless mouth. Then I struck him with

Cudworth held his hand to me in the moonlight, and I could see the scars. It looked as if it had been mangled

"I was. Seven years I waited. You know, it takes that long for the disease to incubate. Here in Kona I waited,

and it did not come. But there was never a day of those seven years, and never a night, that I did not look out

on . . . on all this . . . " His voice broke as he swept his eyes from the moonbathed sea beneath to the snowy

summits above. "I could not bear to think of losing it, of never again beholding Kona. Seven years! I stayed

clean. But that is why I am single. I was engaged. I could not dare to marry while I was in doubt. She did not

understand. She went away to the States and married. I have never seen her since.

"Just at the moment I got clear of the leper policeman there was a rush and clatter of hoofs like a cavalry

charge. It was the squarehead. He had been afraid of a rumpus and he had improved his time by making those

blessed lepers he was guarding saddle up four horses. We were ready for him. Lyte had accounted for three

kokuas, and between us we untangled Burnley from a couple more. The whole settlement was in an uproar by

that time, and as we dashed away somebody opened upon us with a Winchester. It must have been Jack

"That was a ride! Leper horses, leper saddles, leper bridles, pitchblack darkness, whistling bullets, and a

road none of the best. And the squarehead's horse was a mule, and he didn't know how to ride, either. But we

made the whaleboat, and as we shoved off through the surf we could hear the horses coming down the hill

"You're going to Shanghai. You look Lyte Gregory up. He is employed in a German firm there. Take him out

to dinner. Open up wine. Give him everything of the best, but don't let him pay for anything. Send the bill to

me. His wife and the kids are in Honolulu, and he needs the money for them. I know. He sends most of his

salary, and lives like an anchorite. And tell him about Kona. There's where his heart is. Tell him all you can

I was born in San Francisco in 1876. At fifteen I was a man among men, and if I had a spare nickel I spent it

on beer instead of candy, because I thought it was more manly to buy beer. Now, when my years are nearly

doubled, I am out on a hunt for the boyhood which I never had, and I am less serious than at any other time of

my life. Guess I'll find that boyhood! Almost the first things I realized were responsibilities. I have no

recollection of being taught to read or writeI could do both at the age of fivebut I know that my first

school was in Alameda before I went out on a ranch with my folks and as a ranch boy worked hard from my

The second school were I tried to pick up a little learning was an irregular hit or miss affair at San Mateo.

Each class sat in a separate desk, but there were days when we did not sit at all, for the master used to get

drunk very often, and then one of the elder boys would thrash him. To even things up, the master would then

thrash the younger lads, so you can think what sort of school it was. There was no one belonging to me, or

associated with me in any way, who had literary tastes or ideas, the nearest I can make to it is that my

greatgrandfather was a circuit writer, a Welshman, known as "Priest" Jones in the backwoods, where his

One of my earliest and strongest impressions was of the ignorance of other people. I had read and absorbed

Washington Irving's "Alhambra" before I was nine, but could never understand how it was that the other

ranchers knew nothing about it. Later I concluded that this ignorance was peculiar to the country, and felt that

those who lived in cities would not be so dense. One day a man from the city came to the ranch. He wore

shiny shoes and a cloth coat, and I felt that here was a good chance for me to exchange thoughts with an

enlightened mind. From the bricks of an old fallen chimney I had built an Alhambra of my own; towers,

terraces, and all were complete, and chalk inscriptions marked the different sections. Here I led the city man

and questioned him about "The Alhambra," but he was as ignorant as the man on the ranch, and then I

consoled myself with the thought that there were only two clever people in the worldWashington Irving

My other readingmatter at that time consisted mainly of dime novels, borrowed from the hired men, and

newspapers in which the servants gloated over the adventures of poor but virtuous shop girls.

Through reading such stuff my mind was necessarily ridiculously conventional, but being very lonely I read

everything that came my way, and was greatly impressed by Ouida's story "Signa," which I devoured

regularly for a couple of years. I never knew the finish until I grew up, for the closing chapters were missing

from my copy, so I kept on dreaming with the hero, and, like him, unable to see Nemesis, at the end. My

work on the ranch at one time was to watch the bees, and as I sat under a tree from sunrise till late in the

afternoon, waiting for the swarming, I had plenty of time to read and dream. Livermore Valley was very flat,

and even the hills around were then to me devoid of interest, and the only incident to break in on my visions

was when I gave the alarm of swarming, and the ranch folks rushed out with pots, pans, and buckets of water.

I think the opening line of "Signa" was "It was only a little lad," yet he had dreams of becoming a great

musician, and having all Europe at his feet. Well, I was only a little lad, too, but why could not I become

Life on a Californian ranch was then to me the dullest possible existence, and every day I thought of going

out beyond the skyline to see the world. Even then there were whispers, promptings; my mind inclined to

things beautiful, although my environment was unbeautiful. The hills and valleys around were eyesores and

Before I was eleven I left the ranch and came to Oakland, where I spent so much of my time in the Free

Public Library, eagerly reading everything that came to hand, that I developed the first stages of St. Vitus'

dance from lack of exercise. Disillusions quickly followed, as I learned more of the world. At this time I

made my living as a newsboy, selling papers in the streets; and from then on until I was sixteen I had a

thousand and one different occupations work and school, school and workand so it ran.

Then the adventurelust was strong within me, and I left home. I didn't run, I just leftwent out in the bay,

and joined the oyster pirates. The days of the oyster pirates are now past, and if I had got my dues for piracy,

I would have been given five hundred years in prison. Later, I shipped as a sailor on a schooner, and also took

a turn at salmon fishing. Oddly enough, my next occupation was on a fishpatrol, where I was entrusted with

the arrest of any violators of the fishing laws. Numbers of lawless Chinese, Greeks, and Italians were at that

time engaged in illegal fishing, and many a patrolman paid his life for his interference. My only weapon on

duty was a steel tablefork, but I felt fearless and a man when I climbed over the side of a boat to arrest some

Subsequently I shipped before the mast and sailed for the Japanese coast on a sealhunting expedition, later

going to Behring Sea. After sealing for seven months I came back to California and took odd jobs at coal

shovelling and longshoring and also in a jute factory, where I worked from six in the morning until seven at

night. I had planned to join the same lot for another sealing trip the following year, but somehow I missed

In my fitful schooldays I had written the usual compositions, which had been praised in the usual way, and

while working in the jute mills I still made an occasional try. The factory occupied thirteen hours of my day,

and being young and husky, I wanted a little time for myself, so there was little left for composition. The San

Francisco Call offered a prize for a descriptive article. My mother urged me to try for it, and I did, taking for

my subject "Typhoon off the Coast of Japan." Very tired and sleepy, knowing I had to be up at halfpast five,

I began the article at midnight and worked straight on until I had written two thousand words, the limit of the

article, but with my idea only half worked out. The next night, under the same conditions, I continued, adding

another two thousand words before I finished, and then the third night I spent in cutting out the excess, so as

to bring the article within the conditions of the contest. The first prize came to me, and the second and third

My success in the San Francisco Call competition seriously turned my thoughts to writing, but my blood was

still too hot for a settled routine, so I practically deferred literature, beyond writing a little gush for the Call,

I tramped all through the United States, from California to Boston, and up and down, returning to the Pacific

coast by way of Canada, where I got into jail and served a term for vagrancy, and the whole tramping

experience made me become a Socialist. Previously I had been impressed by the dignity of labour, and,

without having read Carlyle or Kipling, I had formulated a gospel of work which put theirs in the shade.

Work was everything. It was sanctification and salvation. The pride I took in a hard day's work well done

would be inconceivable to you. I was as faithful a wageslave as ever a capitalist exploited. In short, my

joyous individualism was dominated by the orthodox bourgeois ethics. I had fought my way from the open

west, where men bucked big and the job hunted the man, to the congested labour centres of the eastern states,

where men were small potatoes and hunted the job for all they were worth, and I found myself looking upon

life from a new and totally different angle. I saw the workers in the shambles at the bottom of the Social Pit. I

swore I would never again do a hard day's work with my body except where absolutely compelled to, and I

In my nineteenth year I returned to Oakland and started at the High School, which ran the usual school

magazine. This publication was a weeklyno, I guess a monthlyone, and I wrote stories for it, very little

imaginary, just recitals of my sea and tramping experiences. I remained there a year, doing janitor work as a

means of livelihood, and leaving eventually because the strain was more than I could bear. At this time my

socialistic utterances had attracted considerable attention, and I was known as the "Boy Socialist," a

distinction that brought about my arrest for streettalking. After leaving the High School, in three months

cramming by myself, I took the three years' work for that time and entered the University of California. I

hated to give up the hope of a University education and worked in a laundry and with my pen to help me keep

on. This was the only time I worked because I loved it, but the task was too much, and when halfway

I worked away ironing shirts and other things in the laundry, and wrote in all my spare time. I tried to keep on

at both, but often fell asleep with the pen in my hand. Then I left the laundry and wrote all the time, and lived

and dreamed again. After three months' trial I gave up writing, having decided that I was a failure, and left for

the Klondike to prospect for gold. At the end of the year, owing to the outbreak of scurvy, I was compelled to

come out, and on the homeward journey of 1,900 miles in an open boat made the only notes of the trip. It was

in the Klondike I found myself. There nobody talks. Everybody thinks. You get your true perspective. I got

While I was in the Klondike my father died, and the burden of the family fell on my shoulders. Times were

bad in California, and I could get no work. While trying for it I wrote "Down the River," which was rejected.

During the wait for this rejection I wrote a twentythousand word serial for a news company, which was also

rejected. Pending each rejection I still kept on writing fresh stuff. I did not know what an editor looked like. I

did not know a soul who had ever published anything. Finally a story was accepted by a Californian

magazine, for which I received five dollars. Soon afterwards "The Black Cat" offered me forty dollars for a

Then things took a turn, and I shall probably not have to shovel coal for a living for some time to come,

My first book was published in 1900. I could have made a good deal at newspaper work; but I had sufficient

sense to refuse to be a slave to that mankilling machine, for such I held a newspaper to be to a young man in

his forming period. Not until I was well on my feet as a magazinewriter did I do much work for newspapers.

I am a believer in regular work, and never wait for an inspiration. Temperamentally I am not only careless

and irregular, but melancholy; still I have fought both down. The discipline I had as a sailor had full effect on

me. Perhaps my old sea days are also responsible for the regularity and limitations of my sleep. Five and a

half hours is the precise average I allow myself, and no circumstance has yet arisen in my life that could keep

I am very fond of sport, and delight in boxing, fencing, swimming, riding, yachting, and even kiteflying.

Although primarily of the city, I like to be near it rather than in it. The country, though, is the best, the only

natural life. In my grownup years the writers who have influenced me most are Karl Marx in a particular,

and Spencer in a general, way. In the days of my barren boyhood, if I had had a chance, I would have gone in

for music; now, in what are more genuinely the days of my youth, if I had a million or two I would devote

myself to writing poetry and pamphlets. I think the best work I have done is in the "League of the Old Men,"

and parts of "The KemptonWace Letters." Other people don't like the former. They prefer brighter and more

cheerful things. Perhaps I shall feel like that, too, when the days of my youth are behind me.