John Fleming Wilson

“ Now you don’t always feel like asking a man why he’s going ashore at a leper colony. In those days you could get a permit to go to Kalaupapa almost any time. It’s stricter now. So we lay off that amphitheater of polyglot misery, and Simpkins got his baggage together. ”

“ Simpkins was born, apparently of commonplace parents, in a small town in the domestic part of Illinois—or what was, in his day. I spent a year of my young life in the Middle West, as they call it now, and 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. ”

“ But Simpkins is dead in Molokai because of that paragraph.”
The Oldest Journalist made an extraordinary grimace at the ceiling and flung his cigar butt against the screen door. “Laugh!” he cried. “But must get it off my mind. have moiled over Simpkins till am fair crazy. I am a victim, and my only hope of release is this column article in the paper tomorrow morning.”
“Don’t get worked up over it,” remonstrated. “It is too hot. Out with your story.”
“There isn’t any story,” he wailed. “It’s positively the dullest affair you ever heard of. There isn’t any inspiration in years of it. ”

“ The proof-reader, gentlest of souls, whose wife in Denver was his sole thought—apart from the mosquitoes—dropped in to inquire when the next steamer with mail from the States might reasonably be expected. The telephone rang to announce that a Japanese on trial for his life at Hilo had been acquitted per wireless. Still the Oldest Journalist wrote on.
“You'd better rush if you’re going to get your last car for Kaimuki,” suggested finally,
He threw down his pencil and bit savagely at the end of a woe-begone cigar. “Did that imbecile librarian find a cut of Simpkins?” he demanded. ”

“ The steamer left, and a couple of weeks later the Health Officer got a letter from one of the lunas of Molokai that made him tear his hair. Simpkins had actually settled in the leper colony, spite of the laws of the kingdom and of society.
“Now, my son, you’re thinking of Father Damien, the missioners, and such. Forget all that. Simpkins was uninspired. He told me why he did this thing, and you will probably laugh when you hear it. Fancy this dull chap fixing his eternal abode in an accursed vale where one hears only the cracked voice of the leper and sees only the hopeless living dead. ”

“ I suppose he had nursed the hope for twenty years that some day he would have an obituary like that. But imagine the audacity of his insisting that I write it so. Pah!”
I mused over this, and the foreman came in again. “Look here,” he said angrily. “Is this the best picture you've got for the front page tomorrow? Simpkins of Molokai! Why, he was crazy! People will laugh at the paper.”
The Oldest Journalist looked up. “I’ve got a column story to go with that,” he said severely. “What business is it of yours, anyway?” ”

“ The snarl melted into a chuckle. “You're the victim, too,” said the Oldest Journalist, putting on his jacket. “Simpkins left all his money to the lepers, and that’s news worth a column any day, with a full-sized picture. I have the will in my pocket.”
So Simpkins of Molokai got the reward of his perseverance on the first page of the Advertiser, graced by a picture that I am informed looked strangely like him. And the final paragraph of the Oldest Journalist’s article ran thus:
With the passing of Mr. ”

“ As we waited for the boat, he came to say goodby. ‘I’m going to live there,’ he said. ‘I think the climate is good.’
“For an instant I thought Simpkims had really a brain working in his head. It was a ghastly joke he had just cracked. ”