"The Pit Of Hell, The Most
Cursed Place On Earth." I Should Have Been Shocked, If, At That
Moment, I
Could have caught a vision of myself a month later, ashore
in the most cursed place on earth and having
A disgracefully good
time along with eight hundred of the lepers who were likewise having
a good time. Their good time was not disgraceful; but mine was, for
in the midst of so much misery it was not meet for me to have a good
time. That is the way I felt about it, and my only excuse is that I
couldn't help having a good time.
For instance, in the afternoon of the Fourth of July all the lepers
gathered at the race-track for the sports. I had wandered away from
the Superintendent and the physicians in order to get a snapshot of
the finish of one of the races. It was an interesting race, and
partisanship ran high. Three horses were entered, one ridden by a
Chinese, one by an Hawaiian, and one by a Portuguese boy. All three
riders were lepers; so were the judges and the crowd. The race was
twice around the track. The Chinese and the Hawaiian got away
together and rode neck and neck, the Portuguese boy toiling along
two hundred feet behind. Around they went in the same positions.
Halfway around on the second and final lap the Chinese pulled away
and got one length ahead of the Hawaiian. At the same time the
Portuguese boy was beginning to crawl up. But it looked hopeless.
The crowd went wild. All the lepers were passionate lovers of
horseflesh. The Portuguese boy crawled nearer and nearer. I went
wild, too. They were on the home stretch. The Portuguese boy
passed the Hawaiian. There was a thunder of hoofs, a rush of the
three horses bunched together, the jockeys plying their whips, and
every last onlooker bursting his throat, or hers, with shouts and
yells. Nearer, nearer, inch by inch, the Portuguese boy crept up,
and passed, yes, passed, winning by a head from the Chinese. I came
to myself in a group of lepers. They were yelling, tossing their
hats, and dancing around like fiends. So was I. When I came to I
was waving my hat and murmuring ecstatically: "By golly, the boy
wins! The boy wins!"
I tried to check myself. I assured myself that I was witnessing one
of the horrors of Molokai, and that it was shameful for me, under
such circumstances, to be so light-hearted and light-headed. But it
was no use. The next event was a donkey-race, and it was just
starting; so was the fun. The last donkey in was to win the race,
and what complicated the affair was that no rider rode his own
donkey. They rode one another's donkeys, the result of which was
that each man strove to make the donkey he rode beat his own donkey
ridden by some one else, Naturally, only men possessing very slow or
extremely obstreperous donkeys had entered them for the race. One
donkey had been trained to tuck in its legs and lie down whenever
its rider touched its sides with his heels. Some donkeys strove to
turn around and come back; others developed a penchant for the side
of the track, where they stuck their heads over the railing and
stopped; while all of them dawdled. Halfway around the track one
donkey got into an argument with its rider. When all the rest of
the donkeys had crossed the wire, that particular donkey was still
arguing. He won the race, though his rider lost it and came in on
foot. And all the while nearly a thousand lepers were laughing
uproariously at the fun. Anybody in my place would have joined with
them in having a good time.
All the foregoing is by way of preamble to the statement that the
horrors of Molokai, as they have been painted in the past, do not
exist. The Settlement has been written up repeatedly by
sensationalists, and usually by sensationalists who have never laid
eyes on it. Of course, leprosy is leprosy, and it is a terrible
thing; but so much that is lurid has been written about Molokai that
neither the lepers, nor those who devote their lives to them, have
received a fair deal. Here is a case in point. A newspaper writer,
who, of course, had never been near the Settlement, vividly
described Superintendent McVeigh, crouching in a grass hut and being
besieged nightly by starving lepers on their knees, wailing for
food. This hair-raising account was copied by the press all over
the United States and was the cause of many indignant and protesting
editorials. Well, I lived and slept for five days in Mr. McVeigh's
"grass hut" (which was a comfortable wooden cottage, by the way; and
there isn't a grass house in the whole Settlement), and I heard the
lepers wailing for food - only the wailing was peculiarly harmonious
and rhythmic, and it was accompanied by the music of stringed
instruments, violins, guitars, ukuleles, and banjos. Also, the
wailing was of various sorts. The leper brass band wailed, and two
singing societies wailed, and lastly a quintet of excellent voices
wailed. So much for a lie that should never have been printed. The
wailing was the serenade which the glee clubs always give Mr.
McVeigh when he returns from a trip to Honolulu.
Leprosy is not so contagious as is imagined. I went for a week's
visit to the Settlement, and I took my wife along - all of which
would not have happened had we had any apprehension of contracting
the disease. Nor did we wear long, gauntleted gloves and keep apart
from the lepers. On the contrary, we mingled freely with them, and
before we left, knew scores of them by sight and name. The
precautions of simple cleanliness seem to be all that is necessary.
On returning to their own houses, after having been among and
handling lepers, the non-lepers, such as the physicians and the
superintendent, merely wash their faces and hands with mildly
antiseptic soap and change their coats.
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