I never got such a good idea of leprosy as I did by reading that wonderful book of the nineteenth century by General Lew Wallace, "Ben Hur." You remember the banishment of Ben Hur and the disintegration of that family life and estate, and the return of Ben Hur from his exile. He goes past his old home. The blinds are closed and drawn and all is deserted. He lies down upon the doorstep and falls asleep. His mother and sister have been in the leper colony and are dying of leprosy and only waiting the time when they will be covered with the remains of others who have come there. So they have come to the city to get bread and secure water, and they see their son and brother lying on the doorstep of their old home. They dare not awaken him for fear anguish at learning of their fate would be more than he could bear. They dare not touch him because it is against the law, so they creep close to him and put their leprous lips against his sandal-covered feet. They then go back again with the bread and water for which they had come. Presently Ben Hur awakens and rubs his eyes and sees great excitement. (This part of the story is mine.) Along comes a blear-eyed, old, whisky-soaked degenerate and Ben Hur asks him what is the trouble, what is the excitement about, and he says: "A couple of lepers have been cleansed, but there is nothing to that, just some occult power, it's all a fake." Ben Hur goes farther on and hears about this wonder, and they say it is nothing; nothing, some long-haired evangelist who says his name is Jesus Christ; it's all a fake. Then Ben Hur goes farther and discovers that it is Jesus of Nazareth and that he has cleansed Ben Hur's own mother and sister. He hears the story and acknowledges the Nazarene. The Leprosy of Sin The lepers had to cry, "Unclean! Unclean!" in those days to warn the people. They were compelled by law to do that: also they were compelled by law to go on the side of the street toward which the wind was blowing lest the breeze bring the germs of their body to the clean and infect them with the disease. And the victim of this disease was compelled to live in a lonely part of the city, waiting until his teeth began to drop out, his eyes to drop from their sockets, and his fingers to drop from his hands, then he was compelled to go out in the tombs, the dying among the dead, there to live until at last he was gathered to the remains of the dead. That was the law that governed the leper in those days. All others shrank from him; he went forth alone. Alone! No man of all he loved or knew, was with him; he went forth on his way, alone, sick at heart, to die alone. Leprosy is infectious. And so is sin. Sin begins in so-called innocent flirtation. The old, god-forsaken scoundrel of a libertine, who looks upon every woman as legitimate prey for his lust, will contaminate a community; one drunkard, staggering and maundering and muttering his way down to perdition, will debauch a town.