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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: 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
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