LEPERS WANT TO MARRY.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 88, 15 April 1899, Page 2 (Supplement)

LEPERS WANT TO MARRY.

STRANGE STORY OF LOVE AND

COURTSHIP-

Love, in a cottage has been endured; Pedro Penede and Lena Grimm are willing to experiment with love in a leper house. They are patients at the United States pest house and both are lepers. They love each other, and Mrs Todd, the nurse, declares that they are betrothed and desire to intermarry.

It is a curious story. Pedro is a Mexican. Eight years ago he entered the tumble down habitation in which tho state keeps its worst afflictsd; and since that day he has not gone beyond the walls except on holidays to .shoot and hunt, alone, on the damp and uninhabited marsh in front of the pest house gate. He is 21 years of age. During the eight sad years of his incarceration his disease has made slow but terrible progress. The right eye is closftd, and the sight is failing in his left. In a short time darkness will settle on him forever.

The entire skin of his face is pigmented and presents areas of what the doctors describe as 'tubercular infiltration.' Arms and hands are the colour of bronze.

He was very lonely In his disfigured state until two years ago, when Lena Grimm became an inmate of the house on the Poterero hills where flies the yellow flag from year's end to year's end. If Pedro's history is sad, hers is even terxible. Her .father* and brothers and herself lived solitary in a cabin deep among the hills of Mendocino. She and three brothers, when infants, had resided in Honolulu and in her mountain home Lena became aware that she had brought hither with her the cursed disease of tha islands. , .

The discovery was made in a. singular and shocking manner. , When nine years old she fell upon a hot stove and blistered her arm severely without perceiving: the faintest sensation of pain.. The, odour .of scorching flesh flj-gt warile'd her "that she was in danger. '.'•■;'

After that the leprosy developed rapidly. Ulcers and swellings appeared and all other syjmptoms of the loathsome and incurable disease. He> condition .attracted the attention of the neighbours and the words 'a leper' were whispered by the mountain folk with the same dread sound that so often echoed among the tombs and in the waste places of ancient Judea, The Grimm family were shunned and isolated. .

One night the neighbours came down in force, drove the family from the county; and applied a torch to the cabin. Thus set adrift the unfortunates migrated to San Francisco, where Lena entered the pest house and her father obtained employment. He visits his daughter in her seclu* sion. •

Lena's nose has been eaten away by ths remorseless bacilli, which cannot b& killed or stayed by modern science* Tubercules have invaded her cheeks, lips, chin, and ears. Her right arm is scarred from the bum which she received when she stumbled against the stove.

On her first day at the leper house Lens, and Pedro struck up a companionship.

There is only one other white woman on the grounds, so circumstances compelled what friendship and mutual affinity afterward made pleasant. For two years they have spent their days together and apart from the rest of the little leper colony of thirteen. They enclosed a plot in a corner of the yard wherein they cultivate potatoes and other garden stuff. Over their trowels and hoes they pursue the intercourse which they wish now to cement bymarriage. .

In the presence of Dr. Frank Tillman, whom all the lepers aamire and whose approaching departure from the pest house they deplore, a.press correspondent saw Pedro Penede. He talked freely of his regard, for Lena, but bashfully denied! that he thought of marriage.

'Perhaps if we were well in health w« should get married,' he said mournfully, 'but what's the use dut here?'

Pedro accuses Mrs Todd, the nurse, herself a leper, of gossiping about his love affair. Perhaps even in the leper house, among the hopeless and the abandoned, the eternal and immutable nature of woman asserts itself and spends its energy on making matches between boys and girls. But Mrs Todd disclaims having had a hand in the matter.

'Pedro and Lena settled it all themselves,' she declared.

Dr. Tillman says that there is no great sanitary reason for preventing the intermarriage of lepers. The statistics which have been gathered show that only 5 per cent, of the children springing- from such a marriage inherit the leprous taint. Unless a leper mother suckles them they are very likely to be pure of blood and free of disease. At Molakai lepers intermarry anl the offspring, immediately after birth, are removed to an orphan asylum and. there detained for two years.

Of the thirteen inmates pf the pest house seven are Chinese. Most of tha whites have resided in the Hawaiian Islands, where they acquired the taint.

Through the long days they watch th« leprosy extend over their bodies; they measure its progress by inches and Jose their limbs and faculties one by one and very slowly; painlessly they observe tb« approach of dissolution, and when ont expects to find them despairing and awaiting death they, are hopeful and. planning marriage.