intermarrying and dividing the island between them.

Life in Hawaii is a song. That's the way Stoddard put it in his
"Hawaii Noi":-


"Thy life is music--Fate the notes prolong!
Each isle a stanza, and the whole a song."


And he was right. Flesh is golden there. The native women are sun-
ripe Junos, the native men bronzed Apollos. They sing, and dance,
and all are flower-bejewelled and flower-crowned. And, outside the
rigid "Missionary Crowd," the white men yield to the climate and the
sun, and no matter how busy they may be, are prone to dance and sing
and wear flowers behind their ears and in their hair. Jack Kersdale
was one of these fellows. He was one of the busiest men I ever met.
He was a several-times millionaire. He was a sugar-king, a coffee
planter, a rubber pioneer, a cattle rancher, and a promoter of three
out of every four new enterprises launched in the islands. He was a
society man, a club man, a yachtsman, a bachelor, and withal as
handsome a man as was ever doted upon by mammas with marriageable
daughters. Incidentally, he had finished his education at Yale, and
his head was crammed fuller with vital statistics and scholarly
information concerning Hawaii Nei than any other islander I ever
encountered. He turned off an immense amount of work, and he sang
and danced and put flowers in his hair as immensely as any of the
idlers.

He had grit, and had fought two duels--both, political--when he