A HERO OF MOLOKAI

New Zealand Tablet, 16 January 1913, Page 13

A HERO OF MOLOKAI

From the leper island of Molokai, in the Sandwich group, made world-famous by the devoted life of Father Damien, there comes the news of the death of another martyr of charity, who was inspired by the example of the Belgian priest to give himself to the same self-sacrificing service of the most afflicted of men and women. He was an Americanlra Barnes Dutton, the son of a Protestant family in one of the Northern States. His people were fairly well off and he received a good education. He was almost a boy when he left his college during the War of Secession to enlist as a private in one of the Zouave volunteer regiments under the Federal flag. By distinguished bravery in action he Won a Lieutenant's Commission, and held the rank of Captain when, at the end of the ■war, his regiment was disbanded. With this good record of honorable service Captain Dutton obtained a post in the engineer department of the Louisville and Nashville Railway. He spent some years in railway work during the time of rapid expansion of the American railroad system that followed the war, and he was a prosperous man. His characteristic thoroughness made him efficient and successful. Then came the great change that was the beginning of the second period of his life. He had made some Catholic friends. He felt attracted towards their faith. He read and inquired, old prejudices of education dropped away, he saw the truth and embraced it, and in the same spirit that had led him to go straight from his college to the ranks of a regiment in a great national crisis, he made up his mind soon after his conversion to consecrate the rest of his life to the active service of the Church. In his humility he did not think of putting himself for--ward as a candidate for the priesthood, but highly educated as he was, and with his record as an officer and an engineer, he entered a religious community as a

lay brother. Brother Button, as he now was, spent a few years in this hidden life, and one day read

The Story of Father Damien’s Heroic Career, and as he read there came to him the longing to imitate the self-sacrifice of the Belgian priest and devote himself to the lepers of Molokai. There were difficulties in the way. He had to obtain leave to transfer himself from the Order to which he belonged to the missionary'congregation that was at work in the Sandwich Islands. His superiors, however, were soon convinced that his desire was prompted by a real vocation, and he was set free to carry it into execution; To prepare himself for his new task and make himself more useful to the lepers, he entered a medical school and followed a course of medicine and surgery, paying special attention to all that bore upon the treatment of leprosy. Equipped with this training, he sailed for Honolulu, and a few days after his arrival shut himself up for the rest of his life in the leper island. Brother Dutton worked there for more than twenty years. He was a most valuable helper to the priests and Franciscan nuns in : charge of the settlement.

An American Methodist clergyman, who paid a visit to the island in 1902, wrote enthusiastically of Brother Dutton. He told how after early Mass the exofficer of Federal Zouaves would put on a long blue blouse and set off for his workshop/ as he called the long line of wooden huts with wide verandahs that form the hospital of Molokai. There for hours he would be at work among his patients, not merely prescribing and directing, but helping to nurse them and dress their sores with his own hands, talking cheerily to them, making , them feel he was their brother, friend, and servant. Thus more than twenty years were spent, and then, like the Belgian priest, the American lay-brother physician found that he himself was a leper. He recognised that his case was hopeless ; disablement and death would be only a matter of time. He bravely fought the disease in order to prolong for a while his life-of useful woi'k. At last, in the spring of this year, he was prostrated by the malady, and one day in October he Died Among Those for Whom He Had Toiled so Long. : He was buried beside the great cross that marks the grave of Father Damien, the cross erected by the English committee over which King Edward VII. presided as Prince of Wales, when the admiration called forth by Father Damien’s life work led to the formation of the National Leprosy Committee, with the double object of raising a monument to his memory and providing funds for helping the lepers. There are several graves around the cross, for not a few devoted men and women have already given their lives up in the same cause. And there will be more of. these heroic sacrifices till the day comes when leprosy is at last eradicated from the islands, for the Catholic Church can always count upon the devotion of her children, and there are always heroic followers of the Cross for whom what is hardest has the most attraction.