The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1905-09-27
FATHER JAMES LAST
REPLY To T. c. BOND

Dear Mr., Bond: Your impressions
in the Advertiser of September 26 OF
our interesting correspondence. oblige
me to give you a final reply
You do not honor the public with
/ new revelations, So I must repeat also
the old story but in its newest form.
Dr. Hyde accused Father Damien of
| immortality because another man, at a
| distant place, became entangled in a
scandalous affair, although no guilt
has ever been proven even against this
other man. When writing to you for
more information in this matter, you
| told him, a friend of yours, that he
/ was accusing the wrong man. But
unfortunately for you, you did not pre-
vail over him SO as to rectify his ac-
cusations. The puzzle as to what was
at thhe bottom of DR.. Hyde's ISLANDERS
| of Father Damien. has never been
| cleared up till you came out with your
revelation of the mistaken identity.
You deserve thanks for this revelation,
but no unmixed thanks.
Why not? On account of the insinu-
ations which accompanied your con-
fession. You made your Confession
the wrong way. My parishioners, you
allude to, make their confession the
right way, accept a lecture, perform
their penance, receive absolution and
nobody ever hears any more about it,
Rrlt do i,,l
public, I was obliged to tell you my
mind about it in public. The trouble
about it was that you showed yourself
more of friend of DR. Hyde in his
wrongdoing than of fairness and truth |
Your identifying yourself with your
friend must account Tor the ''contin- |
uous and insisting aspersion'' you got |
from me, am sorry to say, not unde- |
servedly. AS to my alleged indiscre- |
ton in publishing more of your letter |
than you wished I will call to witness |
all the staff of the printers-and be- |
sides the reporter to whom I gave your
letter, to state that it was written with |
two P. S. just the way the Advertiser
published it and neither the printer
nor myself could guess that your leave
to publish it applied only to it's first |
part.
L am astonished that you dare call
eminent wisdom the silence DR.. Hyde
kept instead of rectifying his terrible
charges against an innocent man. after
you told him of his error, if error it
was.
Ii we may exercise charity and sup
pose that he enormously was led to
his false statements, could he be free /
from sin, from true, grievous sin, the
moment he knew of his error and fail
ed to correct it? Suppose another
friend of yours gets away by mistake
and in perfect good faith, with your
purse, isn't he obliged to restore it as II
soon as informed of his mistake or i
become an actual theft Just so in
charges. II
But here is another of your most
statements: That Dr.
Hyde's education, social standing,
in works of char
lty put him above the rule of common
justice and permits him to let SANDER
GUS statements of the worst kind go on
over the world uncorrected. [ confess, |
my mind is too ''obtuse' to understand
this III
Now, Mr.. Bond, in conclusion I wish
TO say that if your confession had been
without trying to ex-
cuse unduly Father Damien's accuser, |
YOU would have avoided to both of us
some pain of mind together with some
unpleasant correspondence.
JAMES C. BEISSEL
Honolulu, September &C. 1905.