been chiefs, who must say to the many fool men: 'Do this; do not
do that. Work, and work as we tell you or your bellies will remain
empty and you will perish. Obey the laws we set you or you will be
beasts and without place in the world. You would not have been,
save for the chiefs before you who ordered and regulated for your
fathers. No seed of you will come after you, except that we order
and regulate for you now. You must be peace-abiding, and decent,
and blow your noses. You must be early to bed of nights, and up
early in the morning to work if you would heave beds to sleep in
and not roost in trees like the silly fowls. This is the season
for the yam-planting and you must plant now. We say now, to-day,
and not picnicking and hulaing to-day and yam-planting to-morrow or
some other day of the many careless days. You must not kill one
another, and you must leave your neighbours' wives alone. All this
is life for you, because you think but one day at a time, while we,
your chiefs, think for you all days and for days ahead.'"

"Like a cloud on the mountain-top that comes down and wraps about
you and that you dimly see is a cloud, so is your wisdom to me,
Kanaka Oolea," Kumuhana murmured. "Yet is it sad that I should be
born a common man and live all my days a common man."

"That is because you were of yourself common," Hardman Pool assured
him. "When a man is born common, and is by nature uncommon, he
rises up and overthrows the chiefs and makes himself chief over the
chiefs. Why do you not run my ranch, with its many thousands of
cattle, and shift the pastures by the rain-fall, and pick the
bulls, and arrange the bargaining and the selling of the meat to
the sailing ships and war vessels and the people who live in the
Honolulu houses, and fight with lawyers, and help make laws, and