st man on earth to collect and propagate gossip
on the volunteer who would and did.

I think I see you--for I try to see you in the flesh as I write these
sentences--I think I see you leap at the word pigsty, a hyperbolical
expression at the best. "He had no hand in the reforms," he was "a
coarse, dirty man"; these were your own words; and you may think it
possible that I am come to support you with fresh evidence. In a sense,
it is even so. Damien has been too much depicted with a conventional
halo and conventional features; so drawn by men who perhaps had not the
eye to remark or the pen to express the individual; or who perhaps were
only blinded and silenced by generous admiration, such as I partly envy
for myself--such as you, if your soul were enlightened, would envy on
your bended knees. It is the least defect of such a method of
portraiture that it makes the path easy for the devil's advocate, and
leaves the misuse of the slanderer a considerable field of truth. For
the truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of the
enemy. The world, in your despite, may perhaps owe you something, if
your letter be the means of substituting once for all a credible likeness
for a wax abstraction. For, if that world at all remember you, on the
day when Damien of Molokai shall be named a Saint, it will be in virtue
of one work: your letter to the Reverend H. B. Gage.

You may ask on what authority I speak. It was my inclement destiny to
become acquainted, not with Damien, but with Dr. Hyde. When I visited
the lazaretto, Damien was already in his resting grave. But such
information as I have, I gathered on the spot in conversation with those
who knew him well and long: some indeed who revered his memory; but
others who had sparred and wrangled with him, who beheld him with no
halo, who perhaps regarded him with small respect, and through whose
unprepared and scarcely partial communications the plain, human features
of the man shone on me convincingly. These gave me what knowledge I
possess; and I learnt it in that scene where it could be most completely
and sensitively understood--Kalawao, which you have never visited, about
which you have never so much as endeavoured to inform yourself; for,
brief as your letter is, you have found the means to stumble into that
confession. "_Less than one-half_ of the island," you say, "is devoted
to the lepers." Molokai--"_Molokai ahina_," the "grey," lofty, and most