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.
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