The Tears of Ah Kim

by Jack London

There was a great noise and racket, but no scandal, in Honolulu'sChinatown. Those within hearing distance merely shrugged theirshoulders and smiled tolerantly at the disturbance as an affair ofaccustomed usualness. "What is it?" asked Chin Mo, down with asharp pleurisy, of his wife, who had paused for a second at theopen window to listen."Only Ah Kim," was her reply. "His mother is beating him again."The fracas was taking place in the garden, behind the living roomsthat were at the back of the store that fronted on the street withthe proud sign above: AH KIM COMPANY, GENERAL MERCHANDISE. Thegarden was a miniature domain, twenty feet square, that somehowcunningly seduced the eye into a sense and seeming of illimitablevastness. There were forests of dwarf pines and oaks, centuriesold yet two or three feet in height, and imported at enormous careand expense. A tiny bridge, a pace across, arched over a miniatureriver that flowed with rapids and cataracts from a miniature lakestocked with myriad-finned, orange-miracled goldfish that inproportion to the lake and landscape were whales. On every sidethe many windows of the several-storied shack-buildings lookeddown. In the centre of the garden, on the narrow gravelled walkclose beside the lake Ah Kim was noisily receiving his beating.No Chinese lad of tender and beatable years was Ah Kim. His wasthe store of Ah Kim Company, and his was the achievement ofbuilding it up through the long years from the shoestring ofsavings of a contract coolie labourer to a bank account in fourfigures and a credit that was gilt edged. An even half-century ofsummers and winters had passed over his head, and, in the passing,fattened him comfortably and snugly. Short of stature, his fullfront was as rotund as a water-melon seed. His face was moon-faced. His garb was dignified and silken, and his black-silkskull-cap with the red button atop, now, alas! fallen on theground, was the skull-cap worn by the successful and dignifiedmerchants of his race.But his appearance, in this moment of the present, was anything butdignified. Dodging and ducking under a rain of blows from a bamboocane, he was crouched over in a half-doubled posture. When he wasrapped on the knuckles and elbows, with which he shielded his faceand head, his winces were genuine and involuntary. From the manysurrounding windows the neighbourhood looked down with placidenjoyment.And she who wielded the stick so shrewdly from long practice!Seventy-four years old, she looked every minute of her time. Herthin legs were encased in straight-lined pants of linen stiff-textured and shiny-black. Her scraggly grey hair was drawnunrelentingly and flatly back from a narrow, unrelenting forehead.Eyebrows she had none, having long since shed them. Her eyes, ofpin-hole tininess, were blackest black. She was shockinglycadaverous. Her shrivelled forearm, exposed by the loose sleeve,possessed no more of muscle than several taut bowstrings stretchedacross meagre bone under yellow, parchment-like skin. Along thismummy arm jade bracelets shot up and down and clashed with everyblow."Ah!" she cried out, rhythmically accenting her blows in series ofthree to each shrill observation. "I forbade you to talk to LiFaa. To-day you stopped on the street with her. Not an hour ago.Half an hour by the clock you talked.--What is that?""It was the thrice-accursed telephone," Ah Kim muttered, while shesuspended the stick to catch what he said. "Mrs. Chang Lucy toldyou. I know she did. I saw her see me. I shall have thetelephone taken out. It is of the devil.""It is a device of all the devils," Mrs. Tai Fu agreed, taking afresh grip on the stick. "Yet shall the telephone remain. I liketo talk with Mrs. Chang Lucy over the telephone.""She has the eyes of ten thousand cats," quoth Ah Kim, ducking andreceiving the stick stinging on his knuckles. "And the tongues often thousand toads," he supplemented ere his next duck."She is an impudent-faced and evil-mannered hussy," Mrs. Tai Fuaccented."Mrs. Chang Lucy was ever that," Ah Kim murmured like the dutifulson he was."I speak of Li Faa," his mother corrected with stick emphasis."She is only half Chinese, as you know. Her mother was a shamelesskanaka. She wears skirts like the degraded haole women--alsocorsets, as I have seen for myself. Where are her children? Yethas she buried two husbands.""The one was drowned, the other kicked by a horse," Ah Kimqualified."A year of her, unworthy son of a noble father, and you wouldgladly be going out to get drowned or be kicked by a horse."Subdued chucklings and laughter from the window audience applaudedher point."You buried two husbands yourself, revered mother," Ah Kim wasstung to retort."I had the good taste not to marry a third. Besides, my twohusbands died honourably in their beds. They were not kicked byhorses nor drowned at sea. What business is it of our neighboursthat you should inform them I have had two husbands, or ten, ornone? You have made a scandal of me, before all our neighbours,and for that I shall now give you a real beating."Ah Kim endured the staccato rain of blows, and said when his motherpaused, breathless and weary:"Always have I insisted and pleaded, honourable mother, that youbeat me in the house, with the windows and doors closed tight, andnot in the open street or the garden open behind the house."You have called this unthinkable Li Faa the Silvery Moon Blossom,"Mrs. Tai Fu rejoined, quite illogically and femininely, but withutmost success in so far as she deflected her son from continuanceof the thrust he had so swiftly driven home."Mrs. Chang Lucy told you," he charged."I was told over the telephone," his mother evaded. "I do not knowall voices that speak to me over that contrivance of all thedevils."Strangely, Ah Kim made no effort to run away from his mother, whichhe could easily have done. She, on the other hand, found freshcause for more stick blows."Ah! Stubborn one! Why do you not cry? Mule that shameth itsancestors! Never have I made you cry. From the time you were alittle boy I have never made you cry. Answer me! Why do you notcry?"Weak and breathless from her exertions, she dropped the stick andpanted and shook as if with a nervous palsy."I do not know, except that it is my way," Ah Kim replied, gazingsolicitously at his mother. "I shall bring you a chair now, andyou will sit down and rest and feel better."But she flung away from him with a snort and tottered agedly acrossthe garden into the house. Meanwhile recovering his skull-cap andsmoothing his disordered attire, Ah Kim rubbed his hurts and gazedafter her with eyes of devotion. He even smiled, and almost mightit appear that he had enjoyed the beating.Ah Kim had been so beaten ever since he was a boy, when he lived onthe high banks of the eleventh cataract of the Yangtse river. Herehis father had been born and toiled all his days from young manhoodas a towing coolie. When he died, Ah Kim, in his own youngmanhood, took up the same honourable profession. Farther back thanall remembered annals of the family, had the males of it beentowing coolies. At the time of Christ his direct ancestors hadbeen doing the same thing, meeting the precisely similarly modelledjunks below the white water at the foot of the canyon, bending thehalf-mile of rope to each junk, and, according to size, tailing onfrom a hundred to two hundred coolies of them and by sheer, two-legged man-power, bowed forward and down till their hands touchedthe ground and their faces were sometimes within a foot of it,dragging the junk up through the white water to the head of thecanyon.Apparently, down all the intervening centuries, the payment of thetrade had not picked up. His father, his father's father, andhimself, Ah Kim, had received the same invariable remuneration--perjunk one-fourteenth of a cent, at the rate he had since learnedmoney was valued in Hawaii. On long lucky summer days when thewaters were easy, the junks many, the hours of daylight sixteen,sixteen hours of such heroic toil would earn over a cent. But in awhole year a towing coolie did not earn more than a dollar and ahalf. People could and did live on such an income. There werewomen servants who received a yearly wage of a dollar. The net-makers of Ti Wi earned between a dollar and two dollars a year.They lived on such wages, or, at least, they did not die on them.But for the towing coolies there were pickings, which were whatmade the profession honourable and the guild a close and hereditarycorporation or labour union. One junk in five that was dragged upthrough the rapids or lowered down was wrecked. One junk in everyten was a total loss. The coolies of the towing guild knew thefreaks and whims of the currents, and grappled, and raked, andnetted a wet harvest from the river. They of the guild were lookedup to by lesser coolies, for they could afford to drink brick teaand eat number four rice every day.And Ah Kim had been contented and proud, until, one bitter springday of driving sleet and hail, he dragged ashore a drowningCantonese sailor. It was this wanderer, thawing out by his fire,who first named the magic name Hawaii to him. He had himself neverbeen to that labourer's paradise, said the sailor; but many Chinesehad gone there from Canton, and he had heard the talk of theirletters written back. In Hawaii was never frost nor famine. Thevery pigs, never fed, were ever fat of the generous offal disdainedby man. A Cantonese or Yangtse family could live on the waste ofan Hawaii coolie. And wages! In gold dollars, ten a month, or, intrade dollars, two a month, was what the contract Chinese cooliereceived from the white-devil sugar kings. In a year the cooliereceived the prodigious sum of two hundred and forty trade dollars--more than a hundred times what a coolie, toiling ten times ashard, received on the eleventh cataract of the Yangtse. In short,all things considered, an Hawaii coolie was one hundred timesbetter off, and, when the amount of labour was estimated, athousand times better off. In addition was the wonderful climate.When Ah Kim was twenty-four, despite his mother's pleadings andbeatings, he resigned from the ancient and honourable guild of theeleventh cataract towing coolies, left his mother to go into a bosscoolie's household as a servant for a dollar a year, and an annualdress to cost not less than thirty cents, and himself departed downthe Yangtse to the great sea. Many were his adventures and severehis toils and hardships ere, as a salt-sea junk-sailor, he won toCanton. When he was twenty-six he signed five years of his lifeand labour away to the Hawaii sugar kings and departed, one ofeight hundred contract coolies, for that far island land, on afestering steamer run by a crazy captain and drunken officers andrejected of Lloyds.Honourable, among labourers, had Ah Kim's rating been as a towingcoolie. In Hawaii, receiving a hundred times more pay, he foundhimself looked down upon as the lowest of the low--a plantationcoolie, than which could be nothing lower. But a coolie whoseancestors had towed junks up the eleventh cataract of the Yangtsesince before the birth of Christ inevitably inherits one characterin large degree, namely, the character of patience. This patiencewas Ah Kim's. At the end of five years, his compulsory servitudeover, thin as ever in body, in bank account he lacked just tentrade dollars of possessing a thousand trade dollars.On this sum he could have gone back to the Yangtse and retired forlife 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 andscorpions of the stifling cane-fields in the semi-dream of acontinuous opium debauch. Why he had not toiled the whole fiveyears under the spell of opium was the expensiveness of the habit.He had had no moral scruples. The drug had cost too much.But Ah Kim did not return to China. He had observed the businesslife of Hawaii and developed a vaulting ambition. For six months,in order to learn business and English at the bottom, he clerked inthe plantation store. At the end of this time he knew more aboutthat particular store than did ever plantation manager know aboutany plantation store. When he resigned his position he wasreceiving forty gold a month, or eighty trade, and he was beginningto put on flesh. Also, his attitude toward mere contract coolieshad become distinctively aristocratic. The manager offered toraise him to sixty fold, which, by the year, would constitute afabulous fourteen hundred and forty trade, or seven hundred timeshis 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 biggeneral merchandise store of Fong & Chow Fong began at the bottomfor fifteen gold per month. He worked a year and a half, andresigned when he was thirty-three, despite the seventy-five goldper month his Chinese employers were paying him. Then it was thathe put up his own sign: AH KIM COMPANY, GENERAL MERCHANDISE.Also, better fed, there was about his less meagre figure aforeshadowing of the melon-seed rotundity that was to attach to himin future years.With the years he prospered increasingly, so that, when he wasthirty-six, the promise of his figure was fulfilling rapidly, and,himself a member of the exclusive and powerful Hai Gum Tong, and ofthe Chinese Merchants' Association, he was accustomed to sitting ashost at dinners that cost him as much as thirty years of towing onthe eleventh cataract would have earned him. Two things he missed:a wife, and his mother to lay the stick on him as of yore.When he was thirty-seven he consulted his bank balance. It stoodhim three thousand gold. For twenty-five hundred down and an easymortgage he could buy the three-story shack-building, and theground in fee simple on which it stood. But to do this, left onlyfive hundred for a wife. Fu Yee Po had a marriageable, properlysmall-footed daughter whom he was willing to import from China, andsell to him for eight hundred gold, plus the costs of importation.Further, Fu Yee Po was even willing to take five hundred down andthe remainder on note at 6 per cent.Ah Kim, thirty-seven years of age, fat and a bachelor, really didwant a wife, especially a small-footed wife; for, China born andreared, the immemorial small-footed female had been deeplyimpressed into his fantasy of woman. But more, even more and farmore than a small-footed wife, did he want his mother and hismother's delectable beatings. So he declined Fu Yee Po's easyterms, and at much less cost imported his own mother from servantin a boss coolie's house at a yearly wage of a dollar and a thirty-cent dress to be mistress of his Honolulu three-story shackbuilding with two household servants, three clerks, and a porter ofall work under her, to say nothing of ten thousand dollars' worthof dress goods on the shelves that ranged from the cheapest cottoncrepes to the most expensive hand-embroidered silks. For be itknown that even in that early day Ah Kim's emporium was beginningto cater to the tourist trade from the States.For thirteen years Ah Kim had lived tolerably happily with hismother, and by her been methodically beaten for causes just orunjust, real or fancied; and at the end of it all he knew asstrongly as ever the ache of his heart and head for a wife, and ofhis loins for sons to live after him, and carry on the dynasty ofAh Kim Company. Such the dream that has ever vexed men, from thoseearly ones who first usurped a hunting right, monopolized a sandbarfor a fish-trap, or stormed a village and put the males thereof tothe sword. Kings, millionaires, and Chinese merchants of Honoluluhave this in common, despite that they may praise God for havingmade them differently and in self-likable images.And the ideal of woman that Ah Kim at fifty ached for had changedfrom his ideal at thirty-seven. No small-footed wife did he wantnow, but a free, natural, out-stepping normal-footed woman that,somehow, appeared to him in his day dreams and haunted his nightvisions in the form of Li Faa, the Silvery Moon Blossom. What ifshe were twice widowed, the daughter of a kanaka mother, the wearerof white-devil skirts and corsets and high-heeled slippers! Hewanted her. It seemed it was written that she should be jointancestor with him of the line that would continue the ownership andmanagement through the generations, of Ah Kim Company, GeneralMerchandise."I will have no half-pake daughter-in-law," his mother oftenreiterated to Ah Kim, pake being the Hawaiian word for Chinese."All pake must my daughter-in-law be, even as you, my son, and asI, your mother. And she must wear trousers, my son, as all thewomen of our family before her. No woman, in she-devil skirts andcorsets, can pay due reverence to our ancestors. Corsets andreverence do not go together. Such a one is this shameless Li Faa.She is impudent and independent, and will be neither obedient toher husband nor her husband's mother. This brazen-faced Li Faawould believe herself the source of life and the first ancestor,recognizing no ancestors before her. She laughs at our joss-sticks, and paper prayers, and family gods, as I have been welltold--""Mrs. Chang Lucy," Ah Kim groaned."Not alone Mrs. Chang Lucy, O son. I have inquired. At least adozen have heard her say of our joss house that it is all monkeyfoolishness. The words are hers--she, who eats raw fish, rawsquid, and baked dog. Ours is the foolishness of monkeys. Yetwould she marry you, a monkey, because of your store that is apalace and of the wealth that makes you a great man. And she wouldput shame on me, and on your father before you long honourablydead."And there was no discussing the matter. As things were, Ah Kimknew his mother was right. Not for nothing had Li Faa been bornforty years before of a Chinese father, renegade to all tradition,and of a kanaka mother whose immediate forebears had broken thetaboos, cast down their own Polynesian gods, and weak-heartedlylistened to the preaching about the remote and unimageable god ofthe Christian missionaries. Li Faa, educated, who could read andwrite English and Hawaiian and a fair measure of Chinese, claimedto believe in nothing, although in her secret heart she feared thekahunas (Hawaiian witch-doctors), who she was certain could charmaway ill luck or pray one to death. Li Faa would never come intoAh Kim's house, as he thoroughly knew, and kow-tow to his motherand be slave to her in the immemorial Chinese way. Li Faa, fromthe Chinese angle, was a new woman, a feminist, who rode horsebackastride, disported immodestly garbed at Waikiki on the surf-boards,and at more than one luau (feast) had been known to dance the hulawith the worst and in excess of the worst, to the scandalousdelight of all.Ah Kim himself, a generation younger than his mother, had beenbitten by the acid of modernity. The old order held, in so far ashe still felt in his subtlest crypts of being the dusty hand of thepast resting on him, residing in him; yet he subscribed to heavypolicies of fire and life insurance, acted as treasurer for thelocal Chinese revolutionises that were for turning the CelestialEmpire into a republic, contributed to the funds of the Hawaii-bornChinese baseball nine that excelled the Yankee nines at their owngame, talked theosophy with Katso Suguri, the Japanese Buddhist andsilk importer, fell for police graft, played and paid his insidiousshare in the democratic politics of annexed Hawaii, and wasthinking of buying an automobile. Ah Kim never dared bare himselfto himself and thrash out and winnow out how much of the old he hadceased to believe in. His mother was of the old, yet he reveredher and was happy under her bamboo stick. Li Faa, the Silvery MoonBlossom, was of the new, yet he could never be quite completelyhappy without her.For he loved Li Faa. Moon-faced, rotund as a water-melon seed,canny business man, wise with half a century of living--nevertheless Ah Kim became an artist when he thought of her. Hethought of her in poems of names, as woman transmuted into flower-terms of beauty and philosophic abstractions of achievement andeasement. She was, to him, and alone to him of all men in theworld, his Plum Blossom, his Tranquillity of Woman, his Flower ofSerenity, his Moon Lily, and his Perfect Rest. And as he murmuredthese love endearments of namings, it seemed to him that in themwere the ripplings of running waters, the tinklings of silver wind-bells, and the scents of the oleander and the jasmine. She was hispoem of woman, a lyric delight, a three-dimensions of flesh andspirit delicious, a fate and a good fortune written, ere the firstman and woman were, by the gods whose whim had been to make all menand women for sorrow and for joy.But his mother put into his hand the ink-brush and placed under it,on the table, the writing tablet."Paint," said she, "the ideograph of TO MARRY."He obeyed, scarcely wondering, with the deft artistry of his raceand training painting the symbolic hieroglyphic."Resolve it," commanded his mother.Ah Kim looked at her, curious, willing to please, unaware of thedrift of her intent."Of what is it composed?" she persisted. "What are the threeoriginals, the sum of which is it: to marry, marriage, the comingtogether and wedding of a man and a woman? Paint them, paint themapart, the three originals, unrelated, so that we may know how thewise men of old wisely built up the ideograph of to marry."And Ah Kim, obeying and painting, saw that what he had painted werethree picture-signs--the picture-signs of a hand, an ear, and awoman."Name them," said his mother; and he named them."It is true," said she. "It is a great tale. It is the stuff ofthe painted pictures of marriage. Such marriage was in thebeginning; such shall it always be in my house. The hand of theman takes the woman's ear, and by it leads her away to his house,where she is to be obedient to him and to his mother. I was takenby the ear, so, by your long honourably dead father. I have lookedat your hand. It is not like his hand. Also have I looked at theear of Li Faa. Never will you lead her by the ear. She has notthat kind of an ear. I shall live a long time yet, and I will bemistress in my son's house, after our ancient way, until I die.""But she is my revered ancestress," Ah Kim explained to Li Faa.He was timidly unhappy; for Li Faa, having ascertained that Mrs.Tai Fu was at the temple of the Chinese AEsculapius making a foodoffering of dried duck and prayers for her declining health, hadtaken advantage of the opportunity to call upon him in his store.Li Faa pursed her insolent, unpainted lips into the form of a half-opened rosebud, and replied:"That will do for China. I do not know China. This is Hawaii, andin Hawaii the customs of all foreigners change.""She is nevertheless my ancestress," Ah Kim protested, "the motherwho gave me birth, whether I am in China or Hawaii, O Silvery MoonBlossom that I want for wife.""I have had two husbands," Li Faa stated placidly. "One was apake, one was a Portuguese. I learned much from both. Also am Ieducated. I have been to High School, and I have played the pianoin public. And I learned from my two husbands much. The pakemakes the best husband. Never again will I marry anything but apake. But he must not take me by the ear--""How do you know of that?" he broke in suspiciously."Mrs. Chang Lucy," was the reply. "Mrs. Chang Lucy tells meeverything that your mother tells her, and your mother tells hermuch. So let me tell you that mine is not that kind of an ear.""Which is what my honoured mother has told me," Ah Kim groaned."Which is what your honoured mother told Mrs. Chang Lucy, which iswhat Mrs. Chang Lucy told me," Li Faa completed equably. "And Inow tell you, O Third Husband To Be, that the man is not born whowill lead me by the ear. It is not the way in Hawaii. I will goonly hand in hand with my man, side by side, fifty-fifty as is thehaole slang just now. My Portuguese husband thought different. Hetried to beat me. I landed him three times in the police court andeach time he worked out his sentence on the reef. After that hegot drowned.""My mother has been my mother for fifty years," Ah Kim declaredstoutly."And for fifty years has she beaten you," Li Faa giggled. "How myfather used to laugh at Yap Ten Shin! Like you, Yap Ten Shin hadbeen born in China, and had brought the China customs with him.His old father was for ever beating him with a stick. He loved hisfather. But his father beat him harder than ever when he became amissionary pake. Every time he went to the missionary services,his father beat him. And every time the missionary heard of it hewas harsh in his language to Yap Ten Shin for allowing his fatherto beat him. And my father laughed and laughed, for my father wasa very liberal pake, who had changed his customs quicker than mostforeigners. And all the trouble was because Yap Ten Shin had aloving heart. He loved his honourable father. He loved the God ofLove of the Christian missionary. But in the end, in me, he foundthe greatest love of all, which is the love of woman. In me heforgot his love for his father and his love for the loving Christ."And he offered my father six hundred gold, for me--the price wassmall because my feet were not small. But I was half kanaka. Isaid that I was not a slave-woman, and that I would be sold to noman. My high-school teacher was a haole old maid who said love ofwoman was so beyond price that it must never be sold. Perhaps thatis why she was an old maid. She was not beautiful. She could notgive herself away. My kanaka mother said it was not the kanaka wayto sell their daughters for a money price. They gave theirdaughters for love, and she would listen to reason if Yap Ten Shinprovided luaus in quantity and quality. My pake father, as I havetold you, was liberal. He asked me if I wanted Yap Ten Shin for myhusband. And I said yes; and freely, of myself, I went to him. Heit was who was kicked by a horse; but he was a very good husbandbefore he was kicked by the horse."As for you, Ah Kim, you shall always be honourable and lovable forme, and some day, when it is not necessary for you to take me bythe ear, I shall marry you and come here and be with you always,and you will be the happiest pake in all Hawaii; for I have had twohusbands, and gone to high school, and am most wise in making ahusband happy. But that will be when your mother has ceased tobeat you. Mrs. Chang Lucy tells me that she beats you very hard.""She does," Ah Kim affirmed. "Behold! He thrust back his loosesleeves, exposing to the elbow his smooth and cherubic forearms.They were mantled with black and blue marks that advertised theweight and number of blows so shielded from his head and face."But she has never made me cry," Ah Kim disclaimed hastily."Never, from the time I was a little boy, has she made me cry.""So Mrs. Chang Lucy says," Li Faa observed. "She says that yourhonourable mother often complains to her that she has never madeyou cry."A sibilant warning from one of his clerks was too late. Havingregained the house by way of the back alley, Mrs. Tai Fu emergedright upon them from out of the living apartments. Never had AhKim seen his mother's eyes so blazing furious. She ignored Li Faa,as she screamed at him:"Now will I make you cry. As never before shall I beat you untilyou do cry.""Then let us go into the back rooms, honourable mother," Ah Kimsuggested. "We will close the windows and the doors, and there mayyou beat me.""No. Here shall you be beaten before all the world and thisshameless woman who would, with her own hand, take you by the earand call such sacrilege marriage! Stay, shameless woman.""I am going to stay anyway," said Li Faa. She favoured the clerkswith a truculent stare. "And I'd like to see anything less thanthe police put me out of here.""You will never be my daughter-in-law," Mrs. Tai Fu snapped.Li Faa nodded her head in agreement."But just the same," she added, "shall your son be my thirdhusband.""You mean when I am dead?" the old mother screamed."The sun rises each morning," Li Faa said enigmatically. "All mylife have I seen it rise--""You are forty, and you wear corsets.""But I do not dye my hair--that will come later," Li Faa calmlyretorted. "As to my age, you are right. I shall be forty-one nextKamehameha Day. For forty years I have seen the sun rise. Myfather was an old man. Before he died he told me that he hadobserved no difference in the rising of the sun since when he was alittle boy. The world is round. Confucius did not know that, butyou will find it in all the geography books. The world is round.Ever it turns over on itself, over and over and around and around.And the times and seasons of weather and life turn with it. Whatis, has been before. What has been, will be again. The time ofthe breadfruit and the mango ever recurs, and man and woman repeatthemselves. The robins nest, and in the springtime the ploverscome from the north. Every spring is followed by another spring.The coconut palm rises into the air, ripens its fruit, and departs.But always are there more coconut palms. This is not all my ownsmart talk. Much of it my father told me. Proceed, honourableMrs. Tai Fu, and beat your son who is my Third Husband To Be. ButI shall laugh. I warn you I shall laugh."Ah Kim dropped down on his knees so as to give his mother everyadvantage. And while she rained blows upon him with the bamboostick, Li Faa smiled and giggled, and finally burst into laughter."Harder, O honourable Mrs. Tai Fu!" Li Faa urged between paroxysmsof mirth.Mrs. Tai Fu did her best, which was notably weak, until sheobserved what made her drop the stick by her side in amazement. AhKim was crying. Down both cheeks great round tears were coursing.Li Faa was amazed. So were the gaping clerks. Most amazed of allwas Ah Kim, yet he could not help himself; and, although no furtherblows fell, he cried steadily on."But why did you cry?" Li Faa demanded often of Ah Kim. "It was soperfectly foolish a thing to do. She was not even hurting you.""Wait until we are married," was Ah Kim's invariable reply, "andthen, O Moon Lily, will I tell you."Two years later, one afternoon, more like a water-melon seed inconfiguration than ever, Ah Kim returned home from a meeting of theChinese Protective Association, to find his mother dead on hercouch. Narrower and more unrelenting than ever were the foreheadand the brushed-back hair. But on her face was a withered smile.The gods had been kind. She had passed without pain.He telephoned first of all to Li Faa's number but did not find heruntil he called up Mrs. Chang Lucy. The news given, the marriagewas dated ahead with ten times the brevity of the old-line Chinesecustom. And if there be anything analogous to a bridesmaid in aChinese wedding, Mrs. Chang Lucy was just that."Why," Li Faa asked Ah Kim when alone with him on their weddingnight, "why did you cry when your mother beat you that day in thestore? You were so foolish. She was not even hurting you.""That is why I cried," answered Ah Kim.Li Faa looked up at him without understanding."I cried," he explained, "because I suddenly knew that my motherwas nearing her end. There was no weight, no hurt, in her blows.I cried because I knew she no longer had strength enough to hurtme. That is why I cried, my Flower of Serenity, my Perfect Rest.That is the only reason why I cried."WAIKIKI, HONOLULU.June 16, 1916.

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