Chinese lepers, who
have but recently been isolated. We are introduced to the poor creatures
one after another, and then we take them all in at a glance, or group
them according to their various stages of decomposition, or the peculiar
character of their physical hideousness.

They are not all alike; with some the flesh has begun to wither and to
slough off, yet they are comparatively cheerful; as fatalists, it makes
very little difference to them how soon or in what fashion they are
translated to the other life. There is one youth who doubtless suffers
some inconveniences from the clumsy development of his case. This lad,
about eighteen years of age, has a face that is swollen like a sponge
saturated with corruption; he cannot raise his bloated eyelids, but,
with his head thrown back, looks downward over his cheeks. Two of these
lepers are as astonishing specimens as any that have ever come under my
observation, yet I have morbidly sought them from Palestine to Molokai.
In these cases the muscles are knotted, the blood curdled; masses of
unwholesome flesh cover them, lying fold upon fold; the lobes of their
ears hang almost to the shoulder; the eyes when visible have an inhuman
glance that transfixes you with horror. Their hands are shapeless stumps
that have lost all natural form or expression.

Of old there was a law for the leprosy of a garment and of a house;
yet, in spite of the stringency of that Mosaic law, the isolation, the
purging with hyssop, and the cleansing by fire, St. Luke records: "There
met Him ten men who were lepers, who stood afar off; and they lifted
up their voices and cried, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" And today,
more than eighteen hundred years later, lepers gather on the slopes
of Mount Zion, and hover at the gates of Jerusalem, and crouch in the
shadow of the tomb of David, crying for the bread of mercy. Leprosy once
thoroughly engrafted on our nation, and nor cedar-wood, nor scarlet,
nor hyssop, nor clean birds, nor ewes of the first year, nor measures of
fine flour, nor offerings of any sort, shall cleanse us for evermore.

Let us turn to pleasanter prospects--the Joss House, for instance,
one of the several temples whither the Chinese frequently repair to
propitiate the reposeful gods. It is an unpretentious building, with
nothing external to distinguish its facade from those adjoining, save
only a Chinese legend above the door. There are many crooks and turns
within it; shrines i