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Man yearns to be loved, or, what is the same thing, to be pitied. Man wishes others to feel and share his hardships and his sorrows. The roadside beggar's exhibition of his sores and gangrened mutilations is something more than a device to extort alms from the passer-by. True alms is pity rather than the pittance that alleviates the material hardships of life.
"As a rule he is crippled for life, isn't he? jaws broken, teeth smashed out? or legs mutilated, gangrened, presently cut off? or an eye knocked out, maybe both eyes?" "It is true, God knoweth it." "And if he is unpopular he can depend on dying, right there in the stocks, can't he?" "He surely can! One may not deny it."
There were no fingers or toes on the hands and feet, the body was covered with frightful wounds, some of which were fresh and bleeding, others covered with dead flesh or turned into excrescences. The whole of one side was black, gangrened, and as it were half eaten away.
What will be the consequence of triennial corruption, triennial drunkenness, triennial idleness, triennial lawsuits, litigations, prosecutions, triennial frenzy, of society dissolved, industry interrupted, ruined, of those personal hatreds that will never be suffered to soften, those animosities and feuds which will be rendered immortal, those quarrels which are never to be appeased, morals vitiated and gangrened to the vitals?
The only present I accepted was a dinner for four persons, which Prince Adam Czartoryski sent me in every day, though the doctor would not let me enjoy it, he being a great believer in diet. The wound in my stomach was progressing favourably, but on the fourth day the surgeons said my hand was becoming gangrened, and they agreed that the only remedy was amputation.
The only present I accepted was a dinner for four persons, which Prince Adam Czartoryski sent me in every day, though the doctor would not let me enjoy it, he being a great believer in diet. The wound in my stomach was progressing favourably, but on the fourth day the surgeons said my hand was becoming gangrened, and they agreed that the only remedy was amputation.
The unnatural position made every movement painful; the lacerated veins and crushed tendons throbbed with incessant anguish; the wounds, inflamed by exposure, gradually gangrened; the arteries especially of the head and stomach became swollen and oppressed with surcharged blood; and while each variety of misery went on gradually increasing, there was added to them the intolerable pang of a burning and raging thirst; and all these physical complications caused an internal excitement and anxiety which made the prospect of death itself of death, the awful unknown enemy, at whose approach man usually shudders most bear the aspect of a delicious and exquisite release.
When I shall be found, sir, in my place here in the Senate, or elsewhere, to sneer at public merit, because it happens to spring up beyond the little limits of my own State or neighborhood; when I refuse, for any such cause, or for any cause, the homage due to American talent, to elevated patriotism, to sincere devotion to liberty and the country; or, if I see an uncommon endowment of Heaven, if I see extraordinary capacity and virtue, in any son of the South; and if, moved by local prejudices or gangrened by State jealousy, I get up here to abate the tithe of a hair from his just character and just fame, may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!
My spirits were depressed by my father's troubled fortunes, and I had just received the first sharp, smarting strokes in the battle of life; those gashes from which poor "unbruised youth," in its infinite self-compassion, fancies its very life-blood must all pour away; little imagining under what gangrened, festering wounds brave life will still hold on its way, and urge to the hopeless end its warfare with unconquerable sorrow.
By placing children at the breast of their mothers, Jean-Jacques rendered an immense service to the cause of virtue; but his age was too deeply gangrened with abuses to understand the lofty lessons unfolded in those two poems; it is right to add also that the philosopher was in these works overmastered by the poet, and in leaving in the heart of Julie after her marriage some vestiges of her first love, he was led astray by the attractiveness of a poetic situation, more touching indeed, but less useful than the truth which he wished to display.
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