Archibald Stewart Harrison

“ They fastened my wrists with fetters softly lined with leather, and light. I was almost free. They led me further along a stone vaulted corridor. I heard the echoes, and I heard her footsteps—a door opened, my feet rustled on straw. The gag was taken from my mouth; the bandage from my eyes—Oh, Christus! what a pitiable sight met my gaze. Virginia was kneeling on the ground, her face upraised to mine. I could see by the dim light that came from a large opening above, that she was bound as I was, but—O Sporus! thou child of Tartarus—her fetters were so heavy she could scarcely lift them unaided. ”

“ I watched the mirror alone. The flesh came—less than ever. I feared to wake her, yet I must eat. I took her softly in my arms, and moved towards the ledge. I reached it. I must free one hand for a moment. I reached the flesh, but I felt her heavy chains slipping. They fell, jerked her arms violently, and with a loud clang reached the floor. She woke, gave one look at my face, all blood-stained as it was, and shouted ‘Glaucus, Glaucus! help! Sporus—thou demon, let me go!’ She tore my face with her nails and bit me, and shrieked again and again. ”

“ The undefined sensation I had before experienced swelled into a deadly sense of sickly fear, as I followed with straining eyeballs a dim something that was stealing along the verge of the enclosure, in the direction of the dark evergreens, erect and human shaped. Had I not been infected by Balfour’s abject terror (for terror is an infectious disease) , it is possible that my natural audacity would have made me dash at the figure to solve the dreadful mystery; but as it was, I stood, for the moment, benumbed, terror struck, and incapable of motion. ”

“ I feel that all and each of you regard your comfort, your health, even your lives, as secondary to a sacred duty. In your hands, gentlemen, will by and by rest the grave responsibility of life and death,—a responsibility to be seriously yet cheerfully accepted by the well educated and practical surgeon. I, too, have a grave responsibility, not only as a surgeon, but as a teacher, and yet I must ask the students to suspend their important labours for a time. ”

“ The moon was shining brightly on her face, and again I saw it as she lay. What would I not have given to see it not? It wanted but a little to sunrise; the stars were growing fainter in the grey morning light when she woke. Oh, what happiness! the old look—the look she had when she sat at my feet in the wild free woods.
“‘Have I been asleep long, my Glaucus? I have had such dreams; I have been a child, and then I dreamed of the woods and Sporus again, and I have dreamed that I was thy bride, and that thou didst die upon our nuptial couch. ”

“ As I sat in the gloom waiting the arrival of my comrade, a succession of strange thoughts and fancies passed through my mind. I speculated upon the probable aspect of the face concealed beneath the sheet—Was it not horribly distorted by the nature of the death—a fearfully sudden death—rendering a wondrous living tissue of organisation, in an instant, effete and worthless—a man yesterday, and to-day knowing more of heaven or hell than all the philosophers upon earth. Now only serving as a subject for dissection, while inheriting an immortality! ”

“ I threw her fetters on my knee, to take their weight, and so the day toiled slowly away. The blood coagulated round the wrists, and the least movement tore open the wounds afresh. She slumbered at last with fatigue and pain. How fair she looked as lying on my breast she slept. Her breath was shorter and faster than I had ever known it. Evening came, and the sun was just sinking when I saw the mirror move and close again; and on the shelf there stood bread and flesh—the flesh was scarcely dressed. ”

“ We actors do little for the State, add little to her wealth or greatness, but we do a good deal for that public which is not the State. I think that if any class in their old age have a claim on the public beyond that which the law of mere competition, of mere barter and sale, gives, it is my own class. We sacrifice our lives to a life-wearing profession, and we are paid for it. ”

“ She smiled when she heard of it, and asked her little George whether he thought so. He wished everybody was, if she was, she was so kind—there was a man with such nice little boats on the beach: might he have one?
He had his boat—and she was mad, they said.
Poor Aunt Jane, one winter, was not well, and the children missed her much: no fingers like Aunt Jane’s to dress dolls, make kites, or mend clothes. No dance-music was like hers: everybody else got tired so soon; she would play for an hour at a time; she never danced except with children. ”

“ Who, in the civil hospital, or in the sacred chamber of private life, may dare to enter, and not bear with him, in a well balanced mind, that store of practical knowledge which nothing save dissection—constant, laborious dissection—of the human body, and the unwearying study of post mortem appearances, can afford him? I say, if he hold not the attainment of this knowledge as the one great object of his life, let the student at once abandon his professional career, and seek elsewhere for a more congenial pursuit. Gentlemen, our studies need no excuse. ”

“ With a fearful shriek—the more startling from his habitual composure—Balfour sprung to his feet, like Richard in the tent-scene; with hair erect, blanched face, and large drops of perspiration gathering on his brow, he staggered back, shouting:
“Oh, God! the man’s alive!”
I dashed at him, horror-struck myself, not at what had occurred—for I saw how it had happened—but at the abject terror of my companion, appalling to the last degree. Clasped together we hustled each other into a corner of the room, giving, in our passing struggles, a sharp gyration to the suspended skeletons. ”

“ Make his labours for thy cause, for thy glory, successful. Bless us both, O Christus!’ She paused, put up her chained arms to my neck, drew my face to hers, kissed me tenderly. ‘Bless my Glaucus, O gracious Christus!’ she murmured, and so died.”
The old preacher sobbed not alone.
“I let her lips chill mine, still I moved them not. She was dead! Sporus was well avenged: his slave, my own Virginia, was dead; I thought of the evening. It came—the mirror moved not—there was no flesh. The wine still gurgled and sparkled in its basin. ”

“ Brethren, forgive me that I could not eat your feasts of flesh.” He paused, raised himself into a sitting posture; his eyes strangely bright. “Brethren, before I depart, I would pray with ye once more.” His hands were uplifted in prayer; the voice came low and faint. “Our Father who art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come; thy will be done in earth, as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and—forgive us our trespasses,—as we forgive them that trespass against us——” A spasm crossed his face, his chest heaved as with a mighty effort ”

“ No light burst from the gloom. All was bare and silent. I returned with much more trepidation than on my advance. I felt every moment as if about to be clasped from behind by a loathsome spectre. Exhausted, and wet with perspiration, I rejoined my comrades. Balfour remained in the same condition, and Fletcher exclaimed, “Thank God you are come! I have been dreadfully frightened with this living ghost. ”

“ Sporus had often seen Virginia. He knew she was his slave. I knew it, too. I must buy her freedom. I went to his house, saw him; he asked to see her again. I urged that it could not affect the price—he would see her. He saw her—he refused—I could not marry a slave. What could we do? I offered him thrice her value as a slave—he still refused; and why? He wanted her for himself!
“Virginia not my wife, but the slave and mistress of Sporus! The thought was horrible. Wealth can do much. ”

“ When a man has once chosen his profession or trade, he had better stick to it; he’ll have so much to learn in his new calling; so many competitors, that it’s a hundred to one if he succeeds. I chose to go to sea like a fool—I’ve learnt my business like a man—and I mean to keep to it like a wise man. There now, Jenny, only three years and it’s all done—money and fame in three years! Cheer up! don’t make it worse for me, for I feel it not a little.”
She saw he did feel it by the gathering moisture of his eye.
“After all, it’s for the best, Jenny, dear.”
So said Jane’s father ”

“ I must confess to a curiosity about poor people. Their ways, manners, habits, modes of existence and thought, have for me a charm that I do not find in the lives of their richer fellows. Their struggles against hunger and poverty, more enduring—sometimes more noble—than those of heroes on the battlefield, are to me as interesting a portion of human experience as the world presents. ”

“ I had placed her on my one knee as before, with her hands resting on the other, on which lay our chains. One arm was round her form, the other hand gripped the chains lest they should slip. She slumbered. The stars grew dim; I was awakened by a wild shriek and a jerk at my fetters. I had fallen asleep, the hand relaxed its hold, a movement of hers had thrown the chains from my knee towards the ground. The whole weight of the united mass was jerked on her slender wrists. What wonder that wild scream of anguish! She had fainted. I carried her to the fountain to bathe her bleeding arms. ”

“ She made him the man he was; encouraged, helped him, as only a sensible woman can help a young man; and in William’s house Aunt Jane was a household god.
She had strange ways, too, had Aunt Jane; he hated snow: nothing would induce her to see it. She would sit in her own room all the time it was on the ground, with candles instead of daylight; and once, when little George brought her a snowball he had made, she burst into tears and sent him away, and was not herself again for a long time. ”

“ You will think of those things I said to thee of my god Christus? Wilt thou have anything to live for, when I am gone?’
“‘I shall go soon too, I hope—I know not how to live without thee, my Virginia.’
“‘But men die not when they will, save with guilt; thou yet mayest escape this when I am gone.’
“‘True, dearest.’ I should not have been there an hour but for her and her chains. Freedom or death was the work of a moment; the windows I could reach easily.
“‘Glaucus; wilt thou grant me a last request?’
“‘Ay, my life; anything that thou wilt ask.’
“She reached up her face to kiss me. ”

“ I made notes of the whole affair, and took the securities into my possession, and then calmly waited long, long hours; I could not tell how long, for I was waked up from a kind of stupor by the sound of a door opening, and then I heard the voice I knew so well—that of M. Vernay.
“You need not stay; I can bring up all I need. Give me a lucifer.” ”

“ You know that the profession is not favourable to health. The excitement—particularly to children—soon wears them out. I know, often and often, I’ve seen my boys as imps and that kind of thing, and felt the life was too fast for them. Late at night, to go from the hot theatre into the cold night air, was a sad trial to the constitution, and children are not old men. You cannot persuade boys of twelve and fourteen that they ought to wrap their throats, and not run out into the cold at night. ”

“ I did—for I love you, Carl. Had you been rich, you would have had many friends; but, being poor, your poetic temperament—your artist nature—is to you but the thin garment of a man who treads through a forest of briars, which, while it leaves him sensitive to the gentlest breath of the winds of heaven, is therefore the less protection from the thorns of earth ”

“ Of course genius is always well rewarded, but mediocrity in this is subject to competition as in other trades or professions. Then the little we do earn is spent in ways to which other professions have nothing analogous. Look at our dresses—we find all, and when a man throws himself into his part, does his best to please the public and do his duty to the manager, he will not have much left to be extravagant with. Besides, the qualities of nature that make a good economist—a careful saving man—are not those which make a good actor. ”

“ Why, to hear him sing My Pretty Jane, in the forecastle of a night, was a regular treat. I’ve heard many a one at the singing-gaffs at Liverpool that couldn’t come near him. And dance! I never saw a fellow so smart on his legs. He used to do the Lancashire clog-dance in an old pair of cut-down sea-boots, and you’d hear the clatter in the ice hills like the muskets at a review. I quite loved the fellow,—he did his work so easy—wanted no telling—saw your drift in a minute, and I don’t think he missed the weather-earing once the whole voyage. Jack Sands, he called himself. ”