The

and clean. In fact everything that can be done for the comfort of the unfortunate victims is done. Government of Hawaii and the missionaries, Catholic and Protestant, certainly deserve the greatest praise for their noble work in this field. We found schoolrooms in which the leper children are taught, with playgrounds and all that may make the little folks forget their ills.

"Now if you care to visit the hospital, I will take you there," said Brother Joseph.

Several expressed a willingness to go, but at the door all but two or three backed out. Some of the unfortunate creatures had managed to crawl out upon the porch, where they sat or reclined, basking in the sunlight.

"These are still able to come out in the air,” our gentle guide explained. "Now come inside and I will show you leprosy in its last stages." We entered the hospital filled with cots on which lay some of the most frightful-looking objects I had ever beheld. Brother Joseph, pointing to the unfortunate victims of this loathsome disease, continued:

"These poor fellows can not last long; those three in that corner are dying now." Pointing to a vacant cot he added: "One died there last night; we just took him out, and he will be buried to-morrow."

I went over to the bedside of one leper who was just breathing his last. All other sights that I had

witnessed on that island paled into insignificance compared with the revolting appearance of this man. The horrible odor of the disease, more repulsive than a thousand charnel-houses, overcame me. I grew dizzy, and had I not staggered to the door I should have fallen.

Having seen enough of lepers, I wandered with Mr. Farrington to the Catholic churchyard, where we paid a visit to the grave of Father Damien, the priest who died of leprosy, then mounting our horses, we returned to Kalaupapa.

I will conclude this chapter with the following verses composed by a blind leper on Molokai, whom we found at Kalawao. The sheet of paper on which they were scrawled was given by the leper to Dr. Ryder, who furnished me with a copy. The rime and meter may be forgiven, when we take into consideration the condition of the poet who composed

them.

THE LEPER BOY.

Composed by CLAYTON L. STRAWN,

a blind Leper at Molokai.

I.

IN a little shaded spot,

On the island of Kauai,

There stands an old grass hut,

For which I often sigh:

V.

Now after I am dead,

Do not bury me so deep;

Plant a tree beside my head

For there's none for me will weepThat the birds at early morn,

Whilst the wind its branches wave,

May warble forth their song

O'er the outcast leper's grave.

CHAPTER IX

CAST AWAY

ON our return to Kalaupapa, we fell in with Dr. Capron and several others, among whom was a young leper named Nathaniel, who claimed to have taken the Goto treatment (administered by a Japanese doctor of that name) with success.

"You need not tell me that leprosy can't be cured," said the leper. "It can. They declared me a leper and sent me here, but I have taken the Goto cure and I am healed. At one time I could plunge a knife blade into my thigh to the handle, and not feel it, but now that the nerves are restored, I am as sensitive to pain as I ever was.'

I asked Dr. Capron about his case, and he said that while his leprosy seemed to have disappeared, it was liable to return. The Board of Health did not feel justified in discharging him. I found that the board did not put much reliance on the reported cures of Goto, the Japanese. Nathaniel was an intelligent young Hawaiian, and seemed sincere in his belief that he was cured, and while he thought the board did him wrong by retaining him, at the