ew Father, who loved them so
much that he was willing to live with them and become one of them. Then
the good bishop went back to Honolulu, and Father Damien set himself
about the task that he had made his entire life work.

As he could not sleep in the huts of the lepers, the brave priest made
his lodging on the ground beneath a pandanus tree, and calling his new
parishioners together he preached to them with brave and comforting
words, telling them that they must not despair, but make the most of
their lives as they were, and that he would help them to build better
houses and bring to them the comforts that they needed. And at once he
busied himself getting building materials from the Government, with
which trim cottages were built, and water pipes, through which he had
fresh water piped down to the settlement from a cold spring above the
cliff. He built a chapel and a dispensary, and not content with this he
bandaged the sores of the lepers with his own hands, and washed their
wounds. Through his efforts a hospital was finally provided and a
doctor came to Molokai, and following his example sisters of mercy and
brave missionaries came there to work, but for a long time Father
Damien was alone with his charges, performing rough tasks with none to
aid him, except the aid that he obtained from the lepers themselves.

It cannot be thought that a man who performed such services could
forever escape contracting the disease, and after Father Damien had
been ten years on Molokai he found himself a victim of the scourge
against which he had so bravely and successfully contended. A visit to
the resident doctor confirmed the worst of his fears, and after that
when speaking to his congregation he used the words "we lepers,"
telling them that he himself had received the cross from which they
suffered, and henceforth was one of them in something more than name.

Although he was now an invalid, he did not fail to perform his priestly
duties until the end, but he never told his family in Belgium of the
misfortune that had befallen him. They learned it eventually from
others, and the shock of the discovery hastened his mother's death.

After fifteen years' service among the lepers Father Damien died of the
disease, leaving behind him a name for pure self-sacrifice that has not
been surpassed since the beginning of the Christian era. He had lived
to see the leper colony grow from a ribald, obscene settlement to an
orderly hospital