Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 263, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 October 1919 — World’s Lepers. [ARTICLE]

World’s Lepers.

The American secretary for the Mission of Lepers estimates that there are not fewer than 2,000,000 lepers In the world, 6,000 of whom have been converted to Christianity. Apropos of this, the Hawaiian legislature has just offered to pension Bro. Joseph Dutton, who succeeded Father Damien at the leper settlement on Molokai. Brother Dutton has not been off the lepet Island for 33 years and has spent $lO,000 of his own ifaoney to relieve the poor creatures among whom he lives. But he refused the pension, wishing no reward and expecting to work on to the end in the cause to which he long ago devoted his life. The world has heroes of whom it rarely hears; and It cannot be otherwise than that such self-sacrifice must win a higher reward than governments or the plaudits of peoples can confer.