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to be uncomfortable until they had undone their work and
left some serious imputation upon her constitution. At last,
seeing that the debate had assumed the character of a cy-
clone or circular storm, going round and round and round
and round till one could never say where it began nor where
it ended, I made some apology for an abrupt departure and
retired to my own room.
Here at least I was alone, but I was very unhappy. I had
fallen upon a set of people who, in spite of their high civili-
sation and many excellences, had been so warped by the
mistaken views presented to them during childhood from
generation to generation, that it was impossible to see how
they could ever clear themselves. Was there nothing which
I could say to make them feel that the constitution of a per-
son’s body was a thing over which he or she had had at any
rate no initial control whatever, while the mind was a per-
fectly different thing, and capable of being created anew
and directed according to the pleasure of its possessor?
Could I never bring them to see that while habits of mind
and character were entirely independent of initial mental
force and early education, the body was so much a crea-
ture of parentage and circumstances, that no punishment
for ill-health should be ever tolerated save as a protection
from contagion, and that even where punishment was inev-
itable it should be attended with compassion? Surely, if the
unfortunate Mahaina were to feel that she could avow her
bodily weakness without fear of being despised for her in-
firmities, and if there were medical men to whom she could
fairly state her case, she would not hesitate about doing so

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