‘C.  M. Hyde.’ {1}

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

You belong, sir, to a sect—­I believe my sect, and that in which my ancestors laboured—­which has enjoyed, and partly failed to utilise, an exceptional advantage in the islands of Hawaii.  The first missionaries came; they found the land already self-purged of its old and bloody faith; they were embraced, almost on their arrival, with enthusiasm; what troubles 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 their failure, such as it is.  One element alone is pertinent, and must here be plainly dealt with.  In the course of their evangelical calling, they—­or too many of them—­grew rich.  It may be news to you that the houses of missionaries are a cause of mocking on the streets of Honolulu.  It will at least be news to you, that when I returned your civil 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.