Maddened by the heat, the detested thing approaches the fiery barrier and
attempts to find some passage of escape, but vain the endeavor! It retreats
toward the center of the ring, and as the heat increases and it begins to
writhe under it, the children cry out with pleasure--a cry in which, I
fancy, there is a cadence of the sound which sends a thrill of delight
through hell--the sound of exultation which rises from the tongues of
bigots when the martyr's soul mounts upward from the flames in which his
body is consumed. Again the scorpion attempts to escape, and again it is
turned back by that impassable barrier of fire. The shouts of the children
deepen. At last, finding that there is no way by which to fly, the hated
thing retreats to the center of its flaming prison and stings itself to
death. Then it is that the exultation of the crowd of cruel tormentors is
most loudly expressed. But do not infer from what I have said that I look
with favor on suicide under any circumstances. That I do not do, but I
would have you look at society and some of its victims.
See what barriers of flame are often thrown around poor, despairing,
miserable men! Listen to that indifference and condemnation, and this wail
of agony! Can you wonder that the outcast abandons hope and plunges the
knife into his heart? He is driven to madness, and feeling that all is
lost, he commits an act which does indeed lose everything for him, for it
bars the gates of heaven against him.
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