the whaleboat, and as we shoved off through the surf
we could hear the horses coming down the hill from Kalaupapa.

"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 about Kona."

JACK LONDON BY HIMSELF

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 write--I could do both at
the age of five--but 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
eighth year.

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 great-grandfather was a circuit
writer, a Welshman, known as "Priest" Jones in the backwoods, where his
enthusiasm led him to scatter the Gospel.

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