FATHER DAMIENAN OPEN LETTER TO THE REVEREND DOCTOR HYDE OF HONOLULUFROMROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

1914LONDONCHATTO & WINDUS

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SYDNEY, _February_ 25, 1890. 

Sir, --It may probably occur to you that we have met, and visited, andconversed; on my side, with interest. You may remember that you havedone me several courtesies, for which I was prepared to be grateful. Butthere are duties which come before gratitude, and offences which justlydivide friends, far more acquaintances. Your letter to the Reverend H. B. Gage is a document which, in my sight, if you had filled me with breadwhen I was starving, if you had sat up to nurse my father when he lay a-dying, would yet absolve me from the bonds of gratitude. You knowenough, doubtless, of the process of canonisation to be aware that, ahundred years after the death of Damien, there will appear a man chargedwith the painful office of the _devil's advocate_. After that noblebrother of mine, and of all frail clay, shall have lain a century atrest, one shall accuse, one defend him. The circumstance is unusual thatthe devil's advocate should be a volunteer, should be a member of a sectimmediately rival, and should make haste to take upon himself his uglyoffice ere the bones are cold; unusual, and of a taste which I shallleave my readers free to qualify; unusual, and to me inspiring. If Ihave at all learned the trade of using words to convey truth and toarouse emotion, you have at last furnished me with a subject. For it isin the interest of all mankind, and the cause of public decency in everyquarter of the world, not only that Damien should be righted, but thatyou and your letter should be displayed at length, in their true colours, to the public eye. 

To do this properly, I must begin by quoting you at large: I shall thenproceed to criticise your utterance from several points of view, divineand human, in the course of which I shall attempt to draw again, and withmore specification, the character of the dead saint whom it has pleasedyou to vilify: so much being done, I shall say farewell to you for ever. 

 "HONOLULU, "_August_ 2, 1889. 

 "Rev. H. B. GAGE. 

 "Dear Brother, --In answer to your inquires about Father Damien, I can only reply that we who knew the man are surprised at the extravagant newspaper laudations, as if he was a most saintly philanthropist. The simple truth is, he was a coarse, dirty man, headstrong and bigoted. He was not sent to Molokai, but went there without orders; did not stay at the leper settlement (before he became one himself), but circulated freely over the whole island (less than half the island is devoted to the lepers), and he came often to Honolulu. He had no hand in the reforms and improvements inaugurated, which were the work of our Board of Health, as occasion required and means were provided. He was not a pure man in his relations with women, and the leprosy of which he died should be attributed to his vices and carelessness. Other have done much for the lepers, our own ministers, the government physicians, and so forth, but never with the Catholic idea of meriting eternal life. --Yours, etc. , "C. M. HYDE" {1}

To deal fitly with a letter so extraordinary, I must draw at the outseton my private knowledge of the signatory and his sect. It may offendothers; scarcely you, who have been so busy to collect, so bold topublish, gossip on your rivals. And this is perhaps the moment when Imay best explain to you the character of what you are to read: I conceiveyou as a man quite beyond and below the reticences of civility: with whatmeasure you mete, with that shall it be measured you again; with you, atlast, I rejoice to feel the button off the foil and to plunge home. Andif in aught that I shall say I should offend others, your colleagues, whom I respect and remember with affection, I can but offer them myregret; I am not free, I am inspired by the consideration of interestsfar more large; and such pain as can be inflicted by anything from memust be indeed trifling when compared with the pain with which they readyour letter. It is not the hangman, but the criminal, that bringsdishonour on the house. 

You belong, sir, to a sect--I believe my sect, and that in which myancestors laboured--which has enjoyed, and partly failed to utilise, andexceptional advantage in the islands of Hawaii. The first missionariescame; they found the land already self-purged of its old and bloodyfaith; they were embraced, almost on their arrival, with enthusiasm; whattroubles they supported came far more from whites than from Hawaiians;and to these last they stood (in a rough figure) in the shoes of God. This is not the place to enter into the degree or causes of theirfailure, such as it is. One element alone is pertinent, and must here beplainly dealt with. In the course of their evangelical calling, they--ortoo many of them--grew rich. It may be news to you that the houses ofmissionaries are a cause of mocking on the streets of Honolulu. It willat least be news to you, that when I returned your civil visit, thedriver of my cab commented on the size, the taste, and the comfort ofyour home. It would have been news certainly to myself, had any one toldme that afternoon that I should live to drag such a matter into print. But you see, sir, how you degrade better men to your own level; and it isneedful that those who are to judge betwixt you and me, betwixt Damienand the devil's advocate, should understand your letter to have beenpenned in a house which could raise, and that very justly, the envy andthe comments of the passers-by. I think (to employ a phrase of yourswhich I admire) it "should be attributed" to you that you have nevervisited the scene of Damien's life and death. If you had, and hadrecalled it, and looked about your pleasant rooms, even your pen perhapswould have been stayed. 

Your sect (and remember, as far as any sect avows me, it is mine) has notdone ill in a worldly sense in the Hawaiian Kingdom. When calamitybefell their innocent parishioners, when leprosy descended and took rootin the Eight Islands, a _quid pro quo_ was to be looked for. To thatprosperous mission, and to you, as one of its adornments, God had sent atlast an opportunity. I know I am touching here upon a nerve acutelysensitive. I know that others of your colleagues look back on theinertia of your Church, and the intrusive and decisive heroism of Damien, with something almost to be called remorse. I am sure it is so withyourself; I am persuaded your letter was inspired by a certain envy, notessentially ignoble, and the one human trait to be espied in thatperformance. You were thinking of the lost chance, the past day; of thatwhich should have been conceived and was not; of the service due and notrendered. _Time was_, said the voice in your ear, in your pleasant room, as you sat raging and writing; and if the words written were base beyondparallel, the rage, I am happy to repeat--it is the only compliment Ishall pay you--the rage was almost virtuous. But, sir, when we havefailed, and another has succeeded; when we have stood by, and another hasstepped in; when we sit and grow bulky in our charming mansions, and aplain, uncouth peasant steps into the battle, under the eyes of God, andsuccours the afflicted, and consoles the dying, and is himself afflictedin his turn, and dies upon the field of honour--the battle cannot beretrieved as your unhappy irritation has suggested. It is a lost battle, and lost for ever. One thing remained to you in your defeat--some ragsof common honour; and these you have made haste to cast away. 

Common honour; not the honour of having done anything right, but thehonour of not having done aught conspicuously foul; the honour of theinert: that was what remained to you. We are not all expected to beDamiens; a man may conceive his duty more narrowly, he may love hiscomforts better; and none will cast a stone at him for that. But will agentleman of your reverend profession allow me an example from the fieldsof gallantry? When two gentlemen compete for the favour of a lady, andthe one succeeds and the other is rejected, and (as will sometimeshappen) matter damaging to the successful rival's credit reaches the earof the defeated, it is held by plain men of no pretensions that his mouthis, in the circumstance, almost necessarily closed. Your Church andDamien's were in Hawaii upon a rivalry to do well: to help, to edify, toset divine examples. You having (in one huge instance) failed, andDamien succeeded, I marvel it should not have occurred to you that youwere doomed to silence; that when you had been outstripped in that highrivalry, and sat inglorious in the midst of your well-being, in yourpleasant room--and Damien, crowned with glories and horrors, toiled androtted in that pigsty of his under the cliffs of Kalawao--you, the electwho would not, were the last man on earth to collect and propagate gossipon the volunteer who would and did. 

I think I see you--for I try to see you in the flesh as I write thesesentences--I think I see you leap at the word pigsty, a hyperbolicalexpression at the best. "He had no hand in the reforms, " he was "acoarse, dirty man"; these were your own words; and you may think itpossible that I am come to support you with fresh evidence. In a sense, it is even so. Damien has been too much depicted with a conventionalhalo and conventional features; so drawn by men who perhaps had not theeye to remark or the pen to express the individual; or who perhaps wereonly blinded and silenced by generous admiration, such as I partly envyfor myself--such as you, if your soul were enlightened, would envy onyour bended knees. It is the least defect of such a method ofportraiture that it makes the path easy for the devil's advocate, andleaves the misuse of the slanderer a considerable field of truth. Forthe truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of theenemy. The world, in your despite, may perhaps owe you something, ifyour letter be the means of substituting once for all a credible likenessfor a wax abstraction. For, if that world at all remember you, on theday when Damien of Molokai shall be named a Saint, it will be in virtueof one work: your letter to the Reverend H. B. Gage. 

You may ask on what authority I speak. It was my inclement destiny tobecome acquainted, not with Damien, but with Dr. Hyde. When I visitedthe lazaretto, Damien was already in his resting grave. But suchinformation as I have, I gathered on the spot in conversation with thosewho knew him well and long: some indeed who revered his memory; butothers who had sparred and wrangled with him, who beheld him with nohalo, who perhaps regarded him with small respect, and through whoseunprepared and scarcely partial communications the plain, human featuresof the man shone on me convincingly. These gave me what knowledge Ipossess; and I learnt it in that scene where it could be most completelyand sensitively understood--Kalawao, which you have never visited, aboutwhich you have never so much as endeavoured to inform yourself; for, brief as your letter is, you have found the means to stumble into thatconfession. "_Less than one-half_ of the island, " you say, "is devotedto the lepers. " Molokai--"_Molokai ahina_, " the "grey, " lofty, and mostdesolate island--along all its northern side plunges a front of precipiceinto a sea of unusual profundity. This range of cliff is, from east towest, the true end and frontier of the island. Only in one spot thereprojects into the ocean a certain triangular and rugged down, grassy, stony, windy, and rising in the midst into a hill with a dead crater: thewhole bearing to the cliff that overhangs it somewhat the same relationas a bracket to a wall. With this hint you will now be able to pick outthe leper station on a map; you will be able to judge how much of Molokaiis thus cut off between the surf and precipice, whether less than a half, or less than a quarter, or a fifth, or a tenth--or, say a twentieth; andthe next time you burst into print you will be in a position to sharewith us the issue of your calculations. 

I imagine you to be one of those persons who talk with cheerfulness ofthat place which oxen and wain-ropes could not drag you to behold. You, who do not even know its situation on the map, probably denouncesensational descriptions, stretching your limbs the while in yourpleasant parlour on Beretania Street. When I was pulled ashore there oneearly morning, there sat with me in the boat two sisters, biddingfarewell (in humble imitation of Damien) to the lights and joys of humanlife. One of these wept silently; I could not withhold myself fromjoining her. Had you been there, it is my belief that nature would havetriumphed even in you; and as the boat drew but a little nearer, and youbeheld the stairs crowded with abominable deformations of our commonmanhood, and saw yourself landing in the midst of such a population asonly now and then surrounds us in the horror of a nightmare--what ahaggard eye you would have rolled over your reluctant shoulder towardsthe house on Beretania Street! Had you gone on; had you found everyfourth face a blot upon the landscape; had you visited the hospital andseen the butt-ends of human beings lying there almost unrecognisable, butstill breathing, still thinking, still remembering; you would haveunderstood that life in the lazaretto is an ordeal from which the nervesof a man's spirit shrink, even as his eye quails under the brightness ofthe sun; you would have felt it was (even today) a pitiful place to visitand a hell to dwell in. It is not the fear of possible infection. Thatseems a little thing when compared with the pain, the pity, and thedisgust of the visitor's surroundings, and the atmosphere of affliction, disease, and physical disgrace in which he breathes. I do not think I ama man more than usually timid; but I never recall the days and nights Ispent upon that island promontory (eight days and seven nights), withoutheartfelt thankfulness that I am somewhere else. I find in my diary thatI speak of my stay as a "grinding experience": I have once jotted in themargin, "_Harrowing_ is the word"; and when the _Mokolii_ bore me at lasttowards the outer world, I kept repeating to myself, with a newconception of their pregnancy, those simple words of the song--

 "'Tis the most distressful country that ever yet was seen. "

And observe: that which I saw and suffered from was a settlement purged, bettered, beautified; the new village built, the hospital and the Bishop-Home excellently arranged; the sisters, the doctor, and the missionaries, all indefatigable in their noble tasks. It was a different place whenDamien came there and made this great renunciation, and slept that firstnight under a tree amidst his rotting brethren: alone with pestilence;and looking forward (with what courage, with what pitiful sinkings ofdread, God only knows) to a lifetime of dressing sores and stumps. 

You will say, perhaps, I am too sensitive, that sights as painful aboundin cancer hospitals and are confronted daily by doctors and nurses. Ihave long learned to admire and envy the doctors and the nurses. Butthere is no cancer hospital so large and populous as Kalawao andKalaupapa; and in such a matter every fresh case, like every inch oflength in the pipe of an organ, deepens the note of the impression; forwhat daunts the onlooker is that monstrous sum of human suffering bywhich he stands surrounded. Lastly, no doctor or nurse is called upon toenter once for all the doors of that gehenna; they do not say farewell, they need not abandon hope, on its sad threshold; they but go for a timeto their high calling, and can look forward as they go to relief, torecreation, and to rest. But Damien shut-to with his own hand the doorsof his own sepulchre. 

I shall now extract three passages from my diary at Kalawao. 

_A_. "Damien is dead and already somewhat ungratefully remembered in thefield of his labours and sufferings. 'He was a good man, but veryofficious, ' says one. Another tells me he had fallen (as other priestsso easily do) into something of the ways and habits of thought of aKanaka; but he had the wit to recognise the fact, and the good sense tolaugh at" [over] "it. A plain man it seems he was; I cannot find he wasa popular. "

_B_. "After Ragsdale's death" [Ragsdale was a famous Luna, or overseer, of the unruly settlement] "there followed a brief term of office byFather Damien which served only to publish the weakness of that nobleman. He was rough in his ways, and he had no control. Authority wasrelaxed; Damien's life was threatened, and he was soon eager to resign. "

_C_. "Of Damien I begin to have an idea. He seems to have been a man ofthe peasant class, certainly of the peasant type: shrewd, ignorant andbigoted, yet with an open mind, and capable of receiving and digesting areproof if it were bluntly administered; superbly generous in the leastthing as well as in the greatest, and as ready to give his last shirt(although not without human grumbling) as he had been to sacrifice hislife; essentially indiscreet and officious, which made him a troublesomecolleague; domineering in all his ways, which made him incurablyunpopular with the Kanakas, but yet destitute of real authority, so thathis boys laughed at him and he must carry out his wishes by the means ofbribes. He learned to have a mania for doctoring; and set up the Kanakasagainst the remedies of his regular rivals: perhaps (if anything matterat all in the treatment of such a disease) the worst thing that he did, and certainly the easiest. The best and worst of the man appear veryplainly in his dealings with Mr. Chapman's money; he had originally laidit out" [intended to lay it out] "entirely for the benefit of Catholics, and even so not wisely; but after a long, plain talk, he admitted hiserror fully and revised the list. The sad state of the boys' home is inpart the result of his lack of control; in part, of his own slovenly waysand false ideas of hygiene. Brother officials used to call it 'Damien'sChinatown. ' 'Well, ' they would say, 'your Chinatown keeps growing. ' Andhe would laugh with perfect good-nature, and adhere to his errors withperfect obstinacy. So much I have gathered of truth about this plain, noble human brother and father of ours; his imperfections are the traitsof his face, by which we know him for our fellow; his martyrdom and hisexample nothing can lessen or annul; and only a person here on the spotcan properly appreciate their greatness. "

I have set down these private passages, as you perceive, withoutcorrection; thanks to you, the public has them in their bluntness. Theyare almost a list of the man's faults, for it is rather these that I wasseeking: with his virtues, with the heroic profile of his life, I and theworld were already sufficiently acquainted. I was besides a littlesuspicious of Catholic testimony; in no ill sense, but merely becauseDamien's admirers and disciples were the least likely to be critical. Iknow you will be more suspicious still; and the facts set down above wereone and all collected from the lips of Protestants who had opposed thefather in his life. Yet I am strangely deceived, or they build up theimage of a man, with all his weakness, essentially heroic, and alive withrugged honesty, generosity, and mirth. 

Take it for what it is, rough private jottings of the worst sides ofDamien's character, collected from the lips of those who had labouredwith and (in your own phrase) "knew the man";--though I question whetherDamien would have said that he knew you. Take it, and observe withwonder how well you were served by your gossips, how ill by yourintelligence and sympathy; in how many points of fact we are at one, andhow widely our appreciations vary. There is something wrong here; eitherwith you or me. It is possible, for instance, that you, who seem to haveso many ears in Kalawao, had heard of the affair of Mr. Chapman's money, and were singly struck by Damien's intended wrong-doing. I was struckwith that also, and set it fairly down; but I was struck much more by thefact that he had the honesty of mind to be convinced. I may here tellyou that it was a long business; that one of his colleagues sat with himlate into the night, multiplying arguments and accusations; that thefather listened as usual with "perfect good-nature and perfectobstinacy"; but at the last, when he was persuaded--"Yes, " said he, "I amvery much obliged to you; you have done me a service; it would have beena theft. " There are many (not Catholics merely) who require their heroesand saints to be infallible; to these the story will be painful; not tothe true lovers, patrons, and servants of mankind. 

And I take it, this is a type of our division; that you are one of thosewho have an eye for faults and failures; that you take a pleasure to findand publish them; and that, having found them, you make haste to forgetthe overvailing virtues and the real success which had alone introducedthem to your knowledge. It is a dangerous frame of mind. That you mayunderstand how dangerous, and into what a situation it has alreadybrought you, we will (if you please) go hand-in-hand through thedifferent phrases of your letter, and candidly examine each from thepoint of view of its truth, its appositeness, and its charity. 

 Damien was _coarse_. 

It is very possible. You make us sorry for the lepers, who had only acoarse old peasant for their friend and father. But you, who were sorefined, why were you not there, to cheer them with the lights ofculture? Or may I remind you that we have some reason to doubt if Johnthe Baptist were genteel; and in the case of Peter, on whose career yourdoubtless dwell approvingly in the pulpit, no doubt at all he was a"coarse, headstrong" fisherman! Yet even in our Protestant Bibles Peteris called Saint. 

 Damien was _dirty_. 

He was. Think of the poor lepers annoyed with this dirty comrade! Butthe clean Dr. Hyde was at his food in a fine house. 

 Damien was _headstrong_. 

I believe you are right again; and I thank God for his strong head andheart. 

 Damien was _bigoted_. 

I am not fond of bigots myself, because they are not fond of me. Butwhat is meant by bigotry, that we should regard it as a blemish in apriest? Damien believed his own religion with the simplicity of apeasant or a child; as I would I could suppose that you do. For this, Iwonder at him some way off; and had that been his only character, shouldhave avoided him in life. But the point of interest in Damien, which hascaused him to be so much talked about and made him at last the subject ofyour pen and mine, was that, in him, his bigotry, his intense and narrowfaith, wrought potently for good, and strengthened him to be one of theworld's heroes and exemplars. 

 Damien _was not sent to Molokai_, _but went there without orders_. 

Is this a misreading? or do you really mean the words for blame? I haveheard Christ, in the pulpits of our Church, held up for imitation on theground that His sacrifice was voluntary. Does Dr. Hyde think otherwise?

 Damien _did not stay at the settlement_, _etc. _

It is true he was allowed many indulgences. Am I to understand that youblame the father for profiting by these, or the officers for grantingthem? In either case, it is a mighty Spartan standard to issue from thehouse on Beretania Street; and I am convinced you will find yourself withfew supporters. 

 Damien _had no hand in the reforms_, _etc. _

I think even you will admit that I have already been frank in mydescription of the man I am defending; but before I take you up upon thishead, I will be franker still, and tell you that perhaps nowhere in theworld can a man taste a more pleasurable sense of contrast than when hepasses from Damien's "Chinatown" at Kalawao to the beautiful Bishop-Homeat Kalaupapa. At this point, in my desire to make all fair for you, Iwill break my rule and adduce Catholic testimony. Here is a passage frommy diary about my visit to the Chinatown, from which you will see how itis (even now) regarded by its own officials: "We went round all thedormitories, refectories, etc. --dark and dingy enough, with a superficialcleanliness, which he" [Mr. Dutton, the lay-brother] "did not seek todefend. 'It is almost decent, ' said he; 'the sisters will make that allright when we get them here. '" And yet I gathered it was already bettersince Damien was dead, and far better than when he was there alone andhad his own (not always excellent) way. I have now come far enough tomeet you on a common ground of fact; and I tell you that, to a mind notprejudiced by jealousy, all the reforms of the lazaretto, and even thosewhich he most vigorously opposed, are properly the work of Damien. Theyare the evidence of his success; they are what his heroism provoked fromthe reluctant and the careless. Many were before him in the field; Mr. Meyer, for instance, of whose faithful work we hear too little: therehave been many since; and some had more worldly wisdom, though none hadmore devotion, than our saint. Before his day, even you will confess, they had effected little. It was his part, by one striking act ofmartyrdom, to direct all men's eyes on that distressful country. At ablow, and with the price of his life, he made the place illustrious andpublic. And that, if you will consider largely, was the one reformneedful; pregnant of all that should succeed. It brought money; itbrought (best individual addition of them all) the sisters; it broughtsupervision, for public opinion and public interest landed with the manat Kalawao. If ever any man brought reforms, and died to bring them, itwas he. There is not a clean cup or towel in the Bishop-Home, but dirtyDamien washed it. 

 Damien _was not a pure man in his relations with women_, _etc. _

How do you know that? Is this the nature of conversation in that houseon Beretania Street which the cabman envied, driving past?--racy detailsof the misconduct of the poor peasant priest, toiling under the cliffs ofMolokai?

Many have visited the station before me; they seem not to have heard therumour. When I was there I heard many shocking tales, for my informantswere men speaking with the plainness of the laity; and I heard plenty ofcomplaints of Damien. Why was this never mentioned? and how came it toyou in the retirement of your clerical parlour?

But I must not even seem to deceive you. This scandal, when I read it inyour letter, was not new to me. I had heard it once before; and I musttell you how. There came to Samoa a man from Honolulu; he, in a public-house on the beach, volunteered the statement that Damien had "contractedthe disease from having connection with the female lepers"; and I find ajoy in telling you how the report was welcomed in a public-house. A mansprang to his feet; I am not at liberty to give his name, but from what Iheard I doubt if you would care to have him to dinner in BeretaniaStreet. "You miserable little -------" (here is a word I dare not print, it would so shock your ears). "You miserable little ------, " he cried, "if the story were a thousand times true, can't you see you are a milliontimes a lower ----- for daring to repeat it?" I wish it could be told ofyou that when the report reached you in your house, perhaps after familyworship, you had found in your soul enough holy anger to receive it withthe same expressions; ay, even with that one which I dare not print; itwould not need to have been blotted away, like Uncle Toby's oath, by thetears of the recording angel; it would have been counted to you for yourbrightest righteousness. But you have deliberately chosen the part ofthe man from Honolulu, and you have played it with improvements of yourown. The man from Honolulu--miserable, leering creature--communicatedthe tale to a rude knot of beach-combing drinkers in a public-house, where (I will so far agree with your temperance opinions) man is notalways at his noblest; and the man from Honolulu had himself beendrinking--drinking, we may charitably fancy, to excess. It was to your"Dear Brother, the Reverend H. B. Gage, " that you chose to communicatethe sickening story; and the blue ribbon which adorns your portly bosomforbids me to allow you the extenuating plea that you were drunk when itwas done. Your "dear brother"--a brother indeed--made haste to deliverup your letter (as a means of grace, perhaps) to the religious papers;where, after many months, I found and read and wondered at it; and whenceI have now reproduced it for the wonder of others. And you and your dearbrother have, by this cycle of operations, built up a contrast veryedifying to examine in detail. The man whom you would not care to haveto dinner, on the one side; on the other, the Reverend Dr. Hyde and theReverend H. B. Gage: the Apia bar-room, the Honolulu manse. 

But I fear you scarce appreciate how you appear to your fellow-men; andto bring it home to you, I will suppose your story to be true. I willsuppose--and God forgive me for supposing it--that Damien faltered andstumbled in his narrow path of duty; I will suppose that, in the horrorof his isolation, perhaps in the fever of incipient disease, he, who wasdoing so much more than he had sworn, failed in the letter of hispriestly oath--he, who was so much a better man than either you or me, who did what we have never dreamed of daring--he too tasted of our commonfrailty. "O, Iago, the pity of it!" The least tender should be moved totears; the most incredulous to prayer. And all that you could do was topen your letter to the Reverend H. B. Gage!

Is it growing at all clear to you what a picture you have drawn of yourown heart? I will try yet once again to make it clearer. You had afather: suppose this tale were about him, and some informant brought itto you, proof in hand: I am not making too high an estimate of youremotional nature when I suppose you would regret the circumstance? thatyou would feel the tale of frailty the more keenly since it shamed theauthor of your days? and that the last thing you would do would be topublish it in the religious press? Well, the man who tried to do whatDamien did, is my father, and the father of the man in the Apia bar, andthe father of all who love goodness; and he was your father too, if Godhad given you grace to see it. 

Footnotes

{1} From the Sydney _Presbyterian_, October 26, 1889.