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. A man sprang to his feet; I am not at
liberty to give his name, but from what I heard I doubt if you
would care to have him to dinner in Beretania Street. "You
miserable little -------" (here is a word I dare not print, it
would so shock your ears). "You miserable little ------," he
cried, "if the story were a thousand times true, can't you see you
are a million times a lower ----- for daring to repeat it?" I wish
it could be told of you that when the report reached you in your
house, perhaps after family worship, you had found in your soul
enough holy anger to receive it with the same expressions; ay, even
with that one which I dare not print; it would not need to have
been blotted away, like Uncle Toby's oath, by the tears of the
recording angel; it would have been counted to you for your
brightest righteousness. But you have deliberately chosen the part
of the man from Honolulu, and you have played it with improvements
of your own. The man from Honolulu - miserable, leering creature -
communicated the tale to a rude knot of beach-combing drinkers in a
public-house, where (I will so far agree with your temperance
opinions) man is not always at his noblest; and the man from
Honolulu had himself been drinking - drinking, we may charitably
fancy, to excess. It was to your "Dear Brother, the Reverend H. B.
Gage," that you chose to communicate the sickening story; and the
blue ribbon which adorns your portly bosom forbids me to allow you
the extenuating plea that you were drunk when it was done. Your
"dear brother" - a brother indeed - made haste to deliver up your