here were ten grocery stores within a radius of half a mile from where Manuel Jacinto lived, and all catered to the Portuguese trade. Not enough people lived around there to keep more than two grocery stores in comfortable circumstances, yet the owners of the eight others managed to pay their bills, their yearly license fees, and to put money in the bank.
And Manuel Jacinto was thinking of adding another store to the long string. Others made money so why couldn’t he? The same way by which the others managed to subsist would put him on the road to being a rich man provided he was careful and escaped being apanhado, as the term was for those upon whom the heavy hand of the law descended.
He was telling his friend José all this one bright Sunday morning as they quietly sipped their Madeira which Manuel had brought from the old country with him on the Suveric when he, and over a thousand of his compatriots, decided to cast their lot in the Paradise of the Pacific.
“But why do you have to fear the law?” José asked, “What law can you be breaking by keeping a grocery store?”
Manuel laughed. “When you have been here as long as I have,” he said, “you’ll understand that the laws here are a bit different from those in old Villa Nova. How do you suppose that ten grocery stores exist in such close proximity? Hardly any of them sell enough groceries to pay the rent. ’Tis the little back room, my friend, the little back room which makes us want to start more stores.”
“The little back room? What do you mean?”
José was a recent arrival and had as yet not become acquainted with the ins and outs of a Portuguese grocery store.
“All these stores have a little back room where men may come together for a good time,” replied Manuel with the superiority born of a year’s stay in Honolulu. “The store keepers want to make money (and who does not?) so they put in a barrel of wine in one corner of this little back room, and a table in another. They propose that a game be played and that the loser treat the crowd to wine. With a chance to get a number of glasses of vinho for nothing the men begin to play and the store keepers make money, for some one always loses. And there is money in this business for me. The other stores add a little water to their wine to increase the profits. I shall sell only pure wine. You know that I brought a large number of casks of the best with me when I came. My place will be eagerly sought after and, provided the law does not interfere, I shall be rich.”
José nodded in acquiescence. There was much to learn that was different in Honolulu.