I have set down these private passages, as you perceive, without
correction; thanks to you, the public has them in their bluntness. They
are almost a list of the man's faults, for it is rather these that I was
seeking: with his virtues, with the heroic profile of his life, I and the
world were already sufficiently acquainted. I was besides a little
suspicious of Catholic testimony; in no ill sense, but merely because
Damien's admirers and disciples were the least likely to be critical. I
know you will be more suspicious still; and the facts set down above were
one and all collected from the lips of Protestants who had opposed the
father in his life. Yet I am strangely deceived, or they build up the
image of a man, with all his weakness, essentially heroic, and alive with
rugged honesty, generosity, and mirth.

Take it for what it is, rough private jottings of the worst sides of
Damien's character, collected from the lips of those who had laboured
with and (in your own phrase) "knew the man";--though I question whether
Damien would have said that he knew you. Take it, and observe with
wonder how well you were served by your gossips, how ill by your
intelligence and sympathy; in how many points of fact we are at one, and
how widely our appreciations vary. There is something wrong here; either
with you or me. It is possible, for instance, that you, who seem to have
so many ears in Kalawao, had heard of the affair of Mr. Chapman's money,
and were singly struck by Damien's intended wrong-doing. I was struck
with that also, and set it fairly down; but I was struck much more by the
fact that he had the honesty of mind to be convinced. I may here tell
you that it was a long business; that one of his colleagues sat with him
late into the night, multiplying arguments and accusations; that the
father listened as usual with "perfect good-nature and perfect
obstinacy"; but at the last, when he was persuaded--"Yes," said he, "I am
very much obliged to you; you have done me a service; it would have been
a theft." There are many (not Catholics merely) who require their heroes
and saints to be infallible; to these the story will be painful; not to
the true lovers, patrons, and servants of mankind.

And I take it, this is a type of our division; that you are one of those
who have an eye for faults and failures; that you take a pleasure to find
and publish them; and that, having found them, you make haste to forget
the overva