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We are not insensible to the claims of military or naval heroism, but I confess I see much more to admire in Father Damien voluntarily surrendering himself to the slow and loathsome martyrdom of Molokai, more in the self-devotion of our "white slaves," as they must, alas! be called, who toil all the day and a deal of the night in a heavy, noisome, almost disease-laden atmosphere in the disgracefully crowded slums of our great cities, and all to earn a few pence wherewith to buy just enough bread to keep body and soul together in themselves and their children.
The Scheut Missionaries and their Jesuit colleagues are doing an admirable service throughout the Congo. Some of them are infused with the spirit that animated Father Damien. Time, distance, and isolation count for naught with them. It is no uncommon thing to encounter in the bush a Catholic priest who has been on continuous service there for fifteen or twenty years without a holiday.
As I have already said, it was only after much urging that she consented to do this work, and her almost painful shrinking from it appears in a letter of March 25, 1911, to Mr. Charles Scribner: "With this note I send the introduction to Father Damien. I didn't see how to touch upon the others when I know so little about them. I know this thing is about as bad as anything can be.
His body and limbs were reduced to ashes under the scaffold; his father, wife, daughter, and family banished the kingdom for ever; the name of Damien effaced and obliterated, and the innocent involved in the punishment of the guilty.
At this point, in my desire to make all fair for you, I will break my rule and adduce Catholic testimony. I have now come far enough to meet you on a common ground of fact; and I tell you that, to a mind not prejudiced by jealousy, all the reforms of the lazaretto, and even those which he most vigorously opposed, are properly the work of Damien.
Father Damien. 1892. Across the Plains. 1892. The Wrecker. 1893. Island Nights' Entertainments. 1893. Catriona. 1894. The Ebb Tide. 1895. Vailima Letters. 1896. Weir of Hermiston. 1898. St. Ives. 1899. The best complete edition on the market is the Thistle Edition, in twenty-six volumes, including the Life and the Letters, published by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.
After a voyage of five months, in which his ship contended with many gales and much rough weather, Father Damien arrived in the Sandwich Islands and was at once made a full priest and given a parish in a wild part of the country a parish so large that it took him days to go from one end of it to the other.
The orange trees which flourish in the Square of the Constitution, the band, the dragging of feet, the sky, the houses, lemon and rose coloured all this became so significant to Mrs. "I am putting the life of Father Damien into verse," Mrs. Duggan had said, for she had lost everything everything in the world, husband and child and everything, but faith remained.
He met Whistler a few evenings later at a dinner to Christie Murray. As they came together Whistler remarked darkly: "You're a bold man and a philanthropist; but remember, Damien died!" And he had, just before, among the lepers of Molokai! Rather rough on the claimant of Lemon Yellow!
This scandal, when I read it in your letter, was not new to me. I had heard it once before; and I must tell you how. There came to Samoa a man from Honolulu; he, in a public- house on the beach, volunteered the statement that Damien had "contracted the disease from having connection with the female lepers"; and I find a joy in telling you how the report was welcomed in a public-house.
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