Man after man that I met in the Settlement, and woman after woman,
in one way or another expressed the same sentiment. It was patent
that they resented bitterly the sensational and untruthful way in
which they have been exploited in the past.
In spite of the fact that they are afflicted by disease, the lepers
form a happy colony, divided into two villages and numerous country
and seaside homes, of nearly a thousand souls. They have six
churches, a Young Men's Christian Association building, several
assembly halls, a band stand, a race-track, baseball grounds,
shooting ranges, an athletic club, numerous glee clubs, and two
brass bands.
"They are so contented down there," Mr. Pinkham told me, "that you
can't drive them away with a shot-gun."
This I later verified for myself. In January of this year, eleven
of the lepers, on whom the disease, after having committed certain
ravages, showed no further signs of activity, were brought back to
Honolulu for re-examination. They were loath to come; and, on being
asked whether or not they wanted to go free if found clean of
leprosy, one and all answered, "Back to Molokai."
In the old days, before the discovery of the leprosy bacillus, a
small number of men and women, suffering from various and wholly
different diseases, were adjudged lepers and sent to Molokai. Years
afterward they suffered great consternation when the bacteriologists
declared that they were not afflicted with leprosy and never had
been. They fought against being sent away from Molokai, and in one
way or another, as helpers and nurses, they got jobs from the Board
of Health and remained. The present jailer is one of these men.
Declared to be a non-leper, he accepted, on salary, the charge of
the jail, in order to escape being sent away.
At the present moment, in Honolulu, there is a bootblack. He is an
American negro. Mr. McVeigh told me about him. Long ago, before
the bacteriological tests, he was sent to Molokai as a leper. As a
ward of the state he developed a superlative degree of independence
and fomented much petty mischief. And then, one day, after having
been for years a perennial source of minor annoyances, the
bacteriological test was applied, and he was declared a non-leper.
"Ah, ha!" chortled Mr. McVeigh. "Now I've got you! Out you go on
the next steamer and good riddance!"
But the negro didn't want to go. Immediately he married an old
woman, in the last stages of leprosy, and began petitioning the
Board of Health for permission to remain and nurse his sick wife.
There was no one, he said pathetically, who could take care of his
poor wife as well as he could. But they saw through his game, and
he was deported on the steamer and given the freedom of the world.
But he preferred Molokai.
