Short Stories
of the Yangtse since before the birth of Christ inevitably inher-
its one character in large degree, namely, the character of pa-
tience. This patience was Ah Kim's. At the end of five years, his
compulsory servitude over, thin as ever in body, in bank ac-
count he lacked just ten trade dollars of possessing a thousand
trade dollars.
On this sum he could have gone back to the Yangtse and
retired for life a really wealthy man. He would have possessed
a larger sum, had he not, on occasion, conservatively played
che fa and fan tan, and had he not, for a twelve-month, toiled
among the centipedes and scorpions of the stifling cane-fields
in the semi-dream of a continuous opium debauch. Why he
had not toiled the whole five years under the spell of opium
was the expensiveness of the habit. He had had no moral scru-
ples. The drug had cost too much.
But Ah Kim did not return to China. He had observed the
business life of Hawaii and developed a vaulting ambition. For
six months, in order to learn business and English at the bottom,
he clerked in the plantation store. At the end of this time he
knew more about that particular store than did ever plantation
manager know about any plantation store. When he resigned his
position he was receiving forty gold a month, or eighty trade,
and he was beginning to put on flesh. Also, his attitude toward
mere contract coolies had become distinctively aristocratic. The
manager offered to raise him to sixty fold, which, by the year,
would constitute a fabulous fourteen hundred and forty trade,
or seven hundred times his annual earning on the Yangtse as a
two-legged horse at one—fourteenth of a gold cent per junk.
Instead of accepting, Ah Kim departed to Honolulu, and in
the big general merchandise store of Fong & Chow Fong began
172