On The Morning
After Our Arrival Charmian And I Attended A Shoot Of The Kalaupapa
Rifle Club, And Caught Our First Glimpse Of The Democracy Of
Affliction And Alleviation That Obtains.
The club was just
beginning a prize shoot for a cup put up by Mr. McVeigh, who is also
a member of the club, as also are Dr. Goodhue and Dr. Hollmann, the
resident physicians (who, by the way, live in the Settlement with
their wives).
All about us, in the shooting booth, were the lepers.
Lepers and non-lepers were using the same guns, and all were rubbing
shoulders in the confined space. The majority of the lepers were
Hawaiians. Sitting beside me on a bench was a Norwegian. Directly
in front of me, in the stand, was an American, a veteran of the
Civil War, who had fought on the Confederate side. He was sixty-
five years of age, but that did not prevent him from running up a
good score. Strapping Hawaiian policemen, lepers, khaki-clad, were
also shooting, as were Portuguese, Chinese, and kokuas - the latter
are native helpers in the Settlement who are non-lepers. And on the
afternoon that Charmian and I climbed the two-thousand-foot pali and
looked our last upon the Settlement, the superintendent, the
doctors, and the mixture of nationalities and of diseased and non-
diseased were all engaged in an exciting baseball game.
Not so was the leper and his greatly misunderstood and feared
disease treated during the middle ages in Europe.
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