Here I was, without comfort, without shelter, and without food. There
was not a particle of my covering that was not as wet as if it had been
fished from the bottom of the ocean. My teeth chattered. I trembled in
every limb. My heart burned with universal fury. At one moment I
stumbled and fell over some unseen obstacle; at another I was turned
back by an impediment I could not overcome.
There was no strict connection between these casual inconveniences and
the persecution under which I laboured. But my distempered thoughts
confounded them together. I cursed the whole system of human existence.
I said, "Here I am, an outcast, destined to perish with hunger and cold.
All men desert me. All men hate me. I am driven with mortal threats
from the sources of comfort and existence. Accursed world! that hates
without a cause, that overwhelms innocence with calamities which ought
to be spared even to guilt! Accursed world! dead to every manly
sympathy; with eyes of horn, and hearts of steel! Why do I consent to
live any longer? Why do I seek to drag on an existence, which, if
protracted, must be protracted amidst the lairs of these human tigers?"
This paroxysm at length exhausted itself.
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