FATHER DAMIEN’S SUCCESSOR.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2018, 11 March 1890, Page 4

FATHER DAMIEN’S SUCCESSOR.

The person who is now on the way to Molokai, the leper island, where Father Damien labored for the unfortunates afflicted with leprosy, and I on which he died from that most loathsome of all diseases, is Miss A, CFowler, a beautiful young English girl, who until the end of January, lived at the village of Combe Down, a few miles from Bath. Her father, the Rev. F, Fowler, is a cleryman of the Church of England, and has worked for many years as chaplain of the infirmary at Bath, Ihe following account of her past life and of her reasons for taking the work among the lepers were given to a representative of the Pall Mail Gazette. The interviewer describes Miss Fowler, who will take the name of sister Hose Gertrude when she reaches her destination, as being very beautiful, with large eyes of the deepest blue, a fair rosy, complexion, and a sweet voice. Miss Fowler said—“ I have had this particular branch of sick nursing in my mind for many years long before Father Damien’s illness and death drew special attention to the Molokai lepers. Seven years ago, shortly after I became a Roman Catholic, I wished to go, but 1 was too young then. Now I have the necessary ballast and experience, and am able to decide for myself. When young one doesn’t know one’s own mind, and my friends did not wish me to decide on what I might perhaps afterwards regret. I have had several years of special training for my post. I have studied medicine at Paris, not to take a medical degree, but to become an efficient sick nurse, and I hold several certificates. I shall try what bi-chloride of mercury will do, which kills the micro-organisms more quickly than any other known antiseptic, and which can be put in baths and on the hands, and is aljso useful-|or -washing instruments used in leprosy.” “I am taking out no special remedy against the disease; nothing beyond the usual precautions, which I shall of course carefully observe. But it is not of myself that I have to think but of my patients, and nothing will prevent me from rendering them all the services which a sick nurse ought to undertake. If lam infected by this disease, I am quite ready to die when my work is done; but really that thought has hardly occurred to me, there are so many other.things to think about, and I look forward with intense interest to my work. I shall have the entire charge of the hospital, and there will be only some native women to assist me. 1 mean to carry out several ideas with regard to nursing; if I find things in a superannuated state I shall change and revolutionize. Then lam taking out a number of articles for beautifying the hospital. My friends in France have been very good to me ; they have given me some beautiful statues and other ornaments for the hospital, delicious soft sweets that the lepers can eat, and many other things. Then I shall sing to my patients, and later on, when I have saved enough of my salary I shall buy a piano or a harmonium for them, and brighten their lives by music.”

The interviewer goes on to say —I rose to go ; a photograph on which the sweet young nun had written her name and her motto was given to me as a souvenir of our meeting, but as I turned to go she hesitated, her happy eyes became once again very grave and dreamy, and, with the hot blood rushing into her cheeks, she handed shyly an old little prayer book over to me and turning to the fly-leaf at the end said, in bashful confusion, “ I don’t know whether I ought to tell you. but unless I do, I shall not have explained one of the reasons of my great wish to go and live with and help the lepers. In Miss Fowler’s clear handwriting a prayer was written on the leaf—the touching, pathetic prayer which is said to have been found on the chest of the Prince Imperial when he was carried dead from the battlefield in Zululand, Miss Fowler pointed to the passage—“lf Thou only giveston this earth a certain sum of happiness, take, O God, my share and bestow it on the most worthy * If Thou seekest vengeance on man, strike me.”