108 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW 



seen that was surely the worst. It was only a few min- 

 utes until we were in the asylum and Dr. Ewing was 

 showing me around, introducing me to the inmates and 

 explaining my work to me. 



What I saw on this first trip through the Leper Asy- 

 lum was so awful and overwhelming that I had fully 

 made up my mind to tell Dr. Ewing that I did not feel 

 cut out for the job, that I considered the task would be 

 very much better done if he continued to do it rather 

 than turn it over to me. When I got back to the gate 

 I took hold of my bicycle and was taking what I thought 

 was my farewell look into that unlovely place, when I 

 happened to catch sight of an old man lying flat on his 

 back in the dust in the shadow of a tree. He had on 

 only a very small loin-cloth. You could see every rib. 

 His breath was coming with very great difficulty. What 

 were left of his hands and feet were all festered and 

 unbandaged and the flies were thick-clustered on the 

 open wounds. He was altogether the most loathsome 

 and repulsive human being I had ever seen. Yet as I 

 looked at him, it came over me that, after all, he was my 

 brother ; in that unlovely, broken body there was a heart 

 that would respond to love and sympathy as would any 

 human heart, and more than all that, in that poor old 

 disease-rotted body there was a soul for which my Lord 

 had shed His blood, and who was I, that I should leave 

 him just because his need was so desperate ? So I never 

 told Dr. Ewing that I would not care for the lepers. I 

 took hold of the job and found that the asylum was 

 supported by the Allahabad Charitable Association, an 

 organization trying to do a great work on entirely in- 

 sufficient funds. It was responsible for the blind, and 

 the cripples in their asylum, for a number of indigent 



