visit, the driver of my cab commented on the size, the taste, and
the comfort of your home. It would have been news certainly to
myself, had any one told me that afternoon that I should live to
drag such matter into print. But you see, sir, how you degrade
better men to your own level; and it is needful that those who are
to judge betwixt you and me, betwixt Damien and the devil's
advocate, should understand your letter to have been penned in a
house which could raise, and that very justly, the envy and the
comments of the passers-by. I think (to employ a phrase of yours
which I admire) it 'should be attributed' to you that you have
never visited the scene of Damien's life and death. If you had,
and had recalled it, and looked about your pleasant rooms, even
your pen perhaps would have been stayed.

Your sect (and remember, as far as any sect avows me, it is mine)
has not done ill in a worldly sense in the Hawaiian Kingdom. When
calamity befell their innocent parishioners, when leprosy descended
and took root in the Eight Islands, a quid pro quo was to be looked
for. To that prosperous mission, and to you, as one of its
adornments, God had sent at last an opportunity. I know I am
touching here upon a nerve acutely sensitive. I know that others
of your colleagues look back on the inertia of your Church, and the
intrusive and decisive heroism of Damien, with something almost to
be called remorse. I am sure it is so with yourself; I am
persuaded your letter was inspired by a certain envy, not
essentially ignoble, and the one human trait to be espied in that
performance. You were thinking of the lost chance, the past day;
of that which should have been conceived and was not; of the
service due and not rendered. Time was, said the voice in your
ear, in your pleasant room, as you sat raging and writing; and if