Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 11, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume III

FATHER DAMIEN
Molokai, but went there without orders; did not
stay at the leper settlement (before he became one
himself), but circulated freely over the whole island
(less than half the island is devoted to the lepers),
and he came often to Honolulu. He had no hand
in the reforms and improvements inaugurated, which
were the work of our Board of Health, as occasion
required and means were provided. He was not a
pure man in his relations with women, and the
leprosy of which he died should be attributed to
his vices and carelessness. Others have done much
for the lepers, our own ministers, the government
physicians, and so forth, but never with the Catholic
idea of meriting eternal Ufe. — Yours, etc.,
*C. M. Hyde.'i
To deal fitly with a letter so extraordinary, I must
draw at the outset on my private knowledge of the
signatory and his sect. It may offend others ;
scarcely you, who have been so busy to collect, so
bold to publish, gossip on your rivals. And this is
perhaps the moment when I may best explain to
you the character of what you are to read : I con-
ceive you as a man quite beyond and below the
reticences of civility : with what measure you mete,
with that shall it be measured you again ; with you,
at last, I rejoice to feel the button off the foil and to
plunge home. And if in aught that I shall say I
should offend others, your colleagues, whom I re-
spect and remember with affection, I can but offer
^ From the Sydney Presbyterian, October 26, 1889.