Short Stories
CHUN AH CHUN
by Jack Lo nd on
There was nothing striking in the appearance of Chun Ah Chun.
He was rather undersized, as Chinese go, and the Chinese nar-
row shoulders and spareness of flesh were his. The average tour-
ist, casually glimpsing him on the streets of Honolulu, would
have concluded that he was a good-natured little Chinese, prob-
ably 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 good-
natured 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 "enormous" was merely the symbol for
the unknown.
Ah Chun had shrewd little eyes, black and beady and so very
little that they were like gimlet-holes. But they were wide apart,
and they sheltered under a forehead that was patently the fore-
head 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 es-
sentially a philosopher, and whether as coolie, or multi-
millionaire and master of many men, his poise of soul was the
same. He lived always in the high equanimity of spiritual re-
pose, 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 that—a Chinese peasant, born to labour in
the fields all his days like a beast, but fated to escape from the
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