ity 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 that--a 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 twenty-fourth. It was then that he escaped by contracting himself as
a coolie to labour for three years on the sugar plantations of Hawaii for
fifty cents a day.

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 cane-growing 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 triple-fool and given a present of fifty dolla