 does it much oftener in order to hide her weakness.«
    And so they went on for half an hour and more, bandying about the question
as to how far their late visitor's intemperance was real or no. Every now and
then they would join in some charitable commonplace, and would pretend to be all
of one mind that Mahaina was a person whose bodily health would be excellent if
it were not for her unfortunate inability to refrain from excessive drinking;
but as soon as this appeared to be fairly settled they began 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
cyclone 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 civilization 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 person's body was a thing over which he or she had had at any
rate no initial control whatever, while the mind was a perfectly 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 creature 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 inevitable 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 infirmities, and
if there were medical men to whom she could fairly state her case, she would not
hesitate about doing so through the fear of taking nasty medicine. It was
possible that her malady was incurable (for I had heard enough to convince me
that her dipsomania was only a pretence and that she was temperate in all her
habits); in that case she might perhaps be justly subject to annoyances or even
to restraint; but who could say whether she was curable or not, until she was
able to make a clean breast of her symptoms instead of
