A WOMAN TO NURSE THE LEPERS. Miss Fabian, an English Catholic, on Her Way to Join Father Damien.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 350, 13 March 1889, Page 3

A WO MAN TO NURSE THE LEPERS. Miss Fabian, an English Catholic, on Her Way to Join Father Damien.

New York, February 9. — Among Ihe English passengers stranded upon the shoals of our Custom-house on the arrival of a steamer last week was a pale, frail little woman ■with spectacles. She was in severe distress. She was explaining to an inspector how somo dozen of black silk half hose and a large supply of red flannel underwear of such strongly masculine persuasion and such abnormal length could possibly be for her own personal use. 'They are for Father Damien, ihe leper priest of the Sandwich Islands, and I am taking them out,' she said. This made no impression whatever upon the sordid soul of the inspector, and he insisted that the owner should pay 50 per cent. duty. When seen afc her pleasant quarters in ; this city Miss Fabian willingly told the i story ot the vestments, and also the story of her strange mission to the Sandwich Islands. 'I am going out to Molokai as a volunteer nurse to the lepers there. It has been my intention for two yeard past, but it is onfy now that there is a hospital erected to furnish suitable shelter for women, that I could go. As soon as this was done I was | notified, and now I am on my way.' 1 But when do you return to England ?' ' Return? why, l can never return. When once I take up my work I am an exile and an outcast, as much as one of the poor wretches I &hall nurse. I have a brother and two sisters living in England whom I shall never see again, but it is so completly a spiritual ambition with me that I have been able to conquer even my love for them. For two years I have been waiting. 1 have studied everything possible, theoretically speaking, on the subject of leprosy,andhave gone through a course of hospital training as well. Of course there are no opportunities for studying the actual disease in London, though I did see one instance in a hospital there.' { Will you be the only woman nurse out there V 'No, there are six more. Two years or more ago a call was sent out from the Church of Rome over filty different orders of women, but only one reported, and that Avas at Syracuse, N. Y. Six from a convent there have already gone.' 'Father Damien is head of the leper colony, is he not ?' ' Yes, and has been for sixteen years. He went out from Belgium a well man. He was nurse, priest, brother, gravedigger, everything, and it was impossible almost for him to avoid taking the loathsome disease. He noticed it first three years ago, but it is quite probable that he had been a leper for several years before. I have heard from an assistant of his that his condition now is very bad ; that leprosy has done its work in turn at his cars, his eyes, nose, throat, his hands and his lungs. Tho poor father is completely disfigured. His voice is almost extinct. I expect I shall be as the others. I shall be contaminated when my time comes. lam not seeking for notoriety, for reward or for anything save the spiritual comf orb of doing for theso dying creatures what their condition keeps others from doing.' The settlement to which Miss Fabian, who is a Liverpool woman and a Roman Catholic, is going, was established in 1865 by the Hawaiian Legislature to prevent the spread of the disease. There are afc present 100 leper orphans on the great settlement.

Dr. Tanner, M.P. for Mid-Cork, having eluded the- vigilance of the police, attended Friday's sitting of the House of Commons, but was subsequently arrested for making a seditious speech.