l as horses
continually fall on this ascent: the doctor goes up with a change of
clothes--it is plain that to be carried would in itself be very
fatiguing to both mind and body; and I should then be at the beginning
of thirteen miles of mountain road to be ridden against time. How should
I come through? I hope you will think me right in my decision: I mean to
stay, and shall not be back in Honolulu till Saturday, June first. You
must all do the best you can to make ready.

Dr. Swift has a wife and an infant son, beginning to toddle and run, and
they live here as composed as brick and mortar--at least the wife does,
a Kentucky German, a fine enough creature, I believe, who was quite
amazed at the sisters shedding tears! How strange is mankind! Gilfillan
too, a good fellow I think, and far from a stupid, kept up his hard
Lowland Scottish talk in the boat while the sister was covering her
face; but I believe he knew, and did it (partly) in embarrassment, and
part perhaps in mistaken kindness. And that was one reason, too, why I
made my speech to them. Partly, too, I did it, because I was ashamed to
do so, and remembered one of my golden rules, "When you are ashamed to
speak, speak up at once." But, mind you, that rule is only golden with
strangers; with your own folks, there are other considerations. This is
a strange place to be in. A bell has been sounded at intervals while I
wrote, now all is still but a musical humming of the sea, not unlike
the sound of telegraph wires; the night is quite cool and pitch dark,
with a small fine rain; one light over in the leper settlement, one
cricket whistling in the garden, my lamp here by my bedside, and my pen
cheeping between my inky fingers.

Next day, lovely morning, slept all night, 80 deg. in the shade, strong,
sweet Anaho trade-wind.

LOUIS.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

_Honolulu, June 1889._

MY DEAR COLVIN,--I am just home after twelve days' journey to Molokai,
seven of them at the leper settlement, where I can only say that the
sight of so much courage, cheerfulness, and devotion strung me too high
to mind the infinite pity and horror of the sights. I used to ride over
from Kalawao to Kalaupapa (about three miles across the promontory, the
cliff-wall, ivied with forest and yet inaccessible from steepness, on my
left), go to the Sisters' home, which is a miracle of neatness, play a
game of croquet with seven leper girls (90 deg. in the shade), got a little
o