Thirty years! and what are they?--what have they
been? Patience, and as best I can, I will unfold their record. Thirty
years! and I feel that the weight of a world's wretchedness has lain upon
me for thrice their number of terrible days! Every effort of my life has
been a failure. Surely and steadily the hand of misfortune has crushed me
until I have looked forward to my bier as a blessed bed of repose--rest
from weariness--forgetfulness of remorse--escape from misery. At the dawn
of life, ay, in its very beginning, there came to me a bitter, deadly,
unmerciful enemy, accompanied in those days by song and laughter--an enemy
that was swift in getting me in his power, and who, when I was once
securely his victim, turned all laughter into wailing, and all songs into
sobbing, and pressed to my bloated lips his poisonous chalice which I have
ever found full of the stinging adders of hell and death. Too well do I
know what it is to feel the burning and jagged links of the devil's chain
cutting through my quivering flesh to the shrinking bone--to feel my nerves
tremble with agony, and my brain burn as if bathed in liquids of fire--too
well, I say, do I know what these things are, for I have felt them
intensified again and again, ten thousand times.
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