The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1908-11-15
THE PERSISTENCE OF THE UNINSPIRED|
BY John FLEMING WILSON, IN MCLURES MAGAZINE
illustrations by Thomas FOgarty.

/ Everything" was the response.
"He achieved the impossible, and I'm
going to give him a column in tomor-
row s paper. Listen. You won t get
! this in the Advertiser of tomorrow 3
date.
81 can only approach this thing
! chronoIogically. Simpkins was born,
apparently of commonplace parents, in
a small town in the domestic part of
/ Illinois--or what was, in his day. /
spent year of my young life in the
7 Middle West, as they call it now, and
I tell you that no people under the sun
have more virtues or less curiosity
about vice than those folk who live
back there where we never know what s
going on And Simpkins came from
there; with his little religion, his neg
lected education, and his dullness God
knows what brought him to the South
Seas. He had no romance in his make,
up, and you couldn t have explained
the word adventure to him. He Just
came 1t happened to be the utterly
commonplace thing to do. And down
here he merely stayed, as they say
of people whose movements are directed
by no visible emotions or desires.
You couldn t use the expression got
to know him. One never can know a
fence-post. / laughed at him, Just as
that librarian laughed tonight. But he
took a terrible revenge. He made me
a victim of the Persistence of the I'm
inspiredl'
1t was comical to see the Oldest
Journalist s disconcertment. He was
tremendously put out, and tore at his
cigar savagely.
FTime has nothing to do with such
people as Simpkins, except to record
their movements and decay. But still,
history. First Simpkins sequence TO this
history. First Simpkins came to Hawaii.
He stayed. He worked in an utterly
uninspired way at most prosaic trade.
He made money. Then he went back
to the States. Didn t go back home
as everybody else does. He merely
returned. Then he came back here, and
in due course / was shut up in the same
cabin ION the Likelike with him for
three days with nobody to talk to.
"He was speechless for three hours,
and then dug up from memory
sentence about the weather. He talked
weather-and there is no such article
this thousand miles either way-till /
was almost insane. Then he maundered
about something else. In a thousand
sentences he couldn t wake a single
idea. His voice, his tone, his manner
were uninspired. He was incapable of
like human variety of thought
I loathed him as / would a street piano
had heard for an eternity
"The third day came, and the gale
that was piling the surf mp on Molokai
moderated. Simpkins came to me- If
the wind goes down awhile, the sea will
be smoother, he said. +
Are you going ashore along here7'
I demanded
AT Kalaupapa, he returned.
'FNow you don t always feel like
asking a man why he's going ashore
at leper colony. In those days you
could get permit to go to Kalaurapa
almost any time. 1t IS stricter now.
So we lay off that amphitheater of poly
glot misery, and Simpkins got his bag.
gage together. As we waited for the
boat, he came to say goodbye fI'm
going to live there, he said. Il think
the climate is good.
"For an instant I thought Simpkins
had really a brain working in his head.
1T was CHASTITY joke he had just crack
ed. But I actually liked him the better
for it. Then I found out that it was
no joke. He hadn't the leprosy He
had nothing but his poor witless head
and money. Do you know what he had
1one2 Listen:
"He had gone to the Health Officer
here and announced that he wanted to