I have struggled, and with streaming eyes tried to wrench the
chains from my bruised and torn body. My weary and long-continued struggles
led to no termination. Termination! No! The lapse of time, that cures all
other things, but makes my case more desperate. For there is no rest for
me. Whithersoever I remove myself, this detestable, hated, sleepless,
never-tiring enemy is in my rear. What a dark, mysterious, unfeeling,
unrelenting tyrant! Is it come to this? When Nero and Caligula swayed the
Roman scepter, it was a fearful thing to offend the bloody rulers. The
Empire had already spread itself from climate to climate, and from sea to
sea. If their unhappy victim fled to the rising of the sun, where the
luminary of day seems to us first to ascend from the waves of the ocean,
the power of the tyrant was still behind him; if he withdrew to the west,
to Hesperian darkness and the shores of barbarian Thule, still he was not
safe from his gore-drenched foe. Rum! Whisky! Alcohol! Fiend! Monster!
Devil! Art thou the offspring in whom the lineaments of these tyrants are
faithfully preserved? Was the world, with all its climates, made in vain
for thy helpless, unoffending victim?
To me the sun brings no return of day.
Pages:
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157