"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."