Ah Chun occupied a unique position in Honolulu. Though he did not
appear in society, he was eligible anywhere. Except among the
Chinese merchants of the city, he never went out; but he received,
and he always was the centre of his household and the head of his
table. Himself peasant, born Chinese, he presided over an
atmosphere of culture and refinement second to none in all the
islands. Nor were there any in all the islands too proud to cross
his threshold and enjoy his hospitality. First of all, the Achun
bungalow was of irreproachable tone. Next, Ah Chun was a power.
And finally, Ah Chun was a moral paragon and an honest business man.
Despite the fact that business morality was higher than on the
mainland, Ah Chun outshone the business men of Honolulu in the
scrupulous rigidity of his honesty. It was a saying that his word
was as good as his bond. His signature was never needed to bind
him. He never broke his word. Twenty years after Hotchkiss, of
Hotchkiss, Morterson Company, died, they found among mislaid papers
a memorandum of a loan of thirty thousand dollars to Ah Chun. It
had been incurred when Ah Chun was Privy Councillor to Kamehameha
II. In the bustle and confusion of those heyday, money-making
times, the affair had slipped Ah Chun's mind. There was no note, no
legal claim against him, but he settled in full with the Hotchkiss'
Estate, voluntarily paying a compound interest that dwarfed the
principal. Likewise, when he verbally guaranteed the disastrous
Kakiku Ditch Scheme, at a time when the least sanguine did not dream
a guarantee necessary--"Signed his cheque for two hundred thousand
without a quiver, gentlemen, without a quiver," was the report of
the secretary of the defunct enterprise, who had been sent on the
forlorn hope of finding out Ah Chun's intentions. And on top of the
many similar actions that were true of his word, there was scarcely
a man of repute in the islands that at one time or another had not