taken possession of fat, vast holdings. Small wonder the trading
crowd did not like his memory. But he had never looked upon his
enormous wealth as his own. He had considered himself God's
steward. Out of the revenues he had built schools, and hospitals,
and churches. Nor was it his fault that sugar, after the slump, had
paid forty per cent; that the bank he founded had prospered into a
railroad; and that, among other things, fifty thousand acres of Oahu
pasture land, which he had bought for a dollar an acre, grew eight
tons of sugar to the acre every eighteen months. No, in all truth,
Isaac Ford was an heroic figure, fit, so Percival Ford thought
privately, to stand beside the statue of Kamehameha I. in front of
the Judiciary Building. Isaac Ford was gone, but he, his son,
carried on the good work at least as inflexibly if not as
masterfully.

He turned his eyes back to the lanai. What was the difference, he
asked himself, between the shameless, grass-girdled hula dances and
the decollete dances of the women of his own race? Was there an
essential difference? or was it a matter of degree?

As he pondered the problem a hand rested on his shoulder.

"Hello, Ford, what are you doing here? Isn't this a bit festive?"

"I try to be lenient, Dr. Kennedy, even as I look on," Percival Ford
answered gravely. "Won't you sit down?"

Dr. Kennedy sat down, clapping his palms sharply. A white-clad
Japanese servant answered swiftly.