The Superintendent’s big dinner was a signal triumph, and he handled the mixed company with rare tact, several factions being represented. But even the grave Bishop Liebert and the Fathers warmed to his kindly and ready humor, and soon all were under the spell of Kalama’s perfumed garlands and the really sumptuous feast.
Following several merry toasts, Mr. McVeigh rose and raised his glass to “The Londons—Jack and Charmian, God bless them!” And went on to confess to a warm regard that affected us deeply. For he has given us of his confidence during the past day or two in a way that has mightily pleased us. At the end of the little speech, breaking into his engaging smile, he announced that he knew all present would wish us well upon our departure, which was approaching all too soon etc., etc., and which would be via the pali trail; and that Mrs. London should ride the best horse on Molokai—his mule Makaha!
By the time we arrived at Beretania Hall for the evening entertainment, it was crammed to suffocation with a joyful crowd of lepers, orchestra in place, resting on their violins, banjos, guitars and ukuleles. After they had opened with Star-Spangled Banner and several Hawaiian selections, a willowy young woman, graceful as a nymph but with face as awful as her body was lovely, rendered a popular lightsome song in tones that had lost all semblance to music. Half-caste she is, traveled and cultured, once a beauty in Honolulu, whose native mother’s bank account is in seven figures. And this girl, in the blossom-time of life, with death overtaking in long strides, bereft of comeliness, shocking to behold, and having known the best that life has to bestow, rises superior to life and dissolution, and, foremost in courage, surpasses the gayest of her sisters in misfortune. What material for a Victor Hugo!
At the end of an hour, we left the fantastic company dancing as lustily as it had sung and laughed and ridden the gladsome day through. No one, listening outside to the unrestrained merrymaking, could have guessed the band of abbreviated human wrecks, their distorted shadows monstrous in the flickering lamplight, performing, unconcernedly for once, their Dance of Death.
July 5.
Let none say that great men, capable of noble sacrifice, have ceased from the earth in this day and age. And Dr. William J. G. Goodhue, with his exceeding modesty, would be the first to protest any association of his pleasant name with such holy company. But no outsider, entering upon the scene of his wonderful and precarious operations in tissue and bone diseased with the mysterious curse of the ages, could doubt that he had come face to face with one who spares himself not from peril of worse than sudden death. Although the world at large recks as little of him as it does of leprosy, great surgeons know and acclaim his work, performed bi-weekly at his clinics, where remedial and plastic operations of incalcuable importance take place. His tracheotomies in lepral stenosis have saved many, and have cured or improved conditions of the nose and throat which no other treatment, so far, has been known to relieve.
(1) The Forbidden Pali Trail, 1907. (2) Landing at Kalaupapa, 1907. (3) Coast of Molokai—Federal Leprosarium on shore. (4) American-Hawaiian. (5) Father Damien’s Grave, 1907.
Ungloved, his sole protection vested in caution against abrading his skin, and an antiseptic washing before and after his work, the man of empirical science waded elbow-deep into the unclean menace upon the operating table. He was assisted by two women nurses, one Hawaiian, one Portuguese, and both with a slight touch of anæsthic leprosy.
The first subject to-day was a middle-aged wahine, jolly and rolling fat, who was borne in laughing and borne out laughing again. In between were but a few self-pitying moans when she raised her head to watch the doctor. We had every proof that she knew no pain, nor even discomfort; but the sight of copiously flowing blood caused her to weep and wail “Auwe!” until one of the nurses said something that made her laugh in spite of herself. The sole of her foot had thickened two inches, and she had not stepped upon it for a couple of years. Into this dulled pad, lengthwise, the cool surgeon cut clean to the diseased bone, which he painstakingly scraped, explaining that the blood itself remains pure, only the tissues and bone being attacked by the bacillus lepræ.