Scrub

“ Every week saw fresh scrub-falling accident cases brought in. One in particular ought to be recorded, as showing that peace hath her heroes as well as war. An old chap, aged about sixty, scrub-falling by himself, had a tree jump back at him, jambing his foot and grinding it to pulp. He tied a bit of string round below the shin, cut off the bits of foot still dangling, and then crawled two miles through the scrub to a road. ”

“ If you should wed, may a father's curse
⁠Be your swift and sure undoing.
“My curse shall feed on your fields of corn,
⁠On your roof-tree make its nesting,
Your wife shall wish your child unborn
⁠As he pines on her sore heart resting.”
Now when this cruel oath he said
⁠The youth did chide him, crying,
“Since I have neither field nor bed
⁠Your curse shall fall to dying. ”

“ I curse my whole life, its joys and its sorrows! I curse myself, my ears, my eyes, my heart, my tongue, my head! All those things which thou hast given me I fling back in thy face, thou Fate, thou Demon! Cursed be thou—aye, cursed for ever! Yet with this very curse will I vanquish thee at the last. For, in truth, what more canst thou do unto me? Strike me, if thou wilt—aye, strike me to the ground: I will yet laugh aloud in thy face, and cry, "My curse be upon thee, my curse be upon thee!" ”

“ My infant-sufferer found relief;
And, in the pilfer'd treasure pleased,
Smiled on my guilt, and hush'd my grief.
But I have griefs of other kind,
Troubles and sorrows more severe;
Give me to ease my tortured mind,
30 Lend to my woes a patient ear;
And let me—if I may not find
A friend to help—find one to hear.
Yet nameless let me plead—my name
Would only wake the cry of scorn;
A child of sin, conceived in shame,
Brought forth in wo, to misery born. ”

“ What the woes to you? To feel for others’ sorrows is humane, But too much feeling is our virtue’s bane. “Come, my dear Rupert! now your tale disclose, That I may know the sufferer and his woes. Know, there is pain that wilful man endures, That our reproof and not our pity cures; For though for such assumed distress we grieve, 1010 Since they themselves as well as us deceive, Yet we assist not.”——The unhappy youth, Unhappy then, beheld not all the truth. “O! what is this?” exclaim’d the dubious boy; “Words that confuse the being they destroy? ”

“ She looked at her hands; they well stained with blood from many cuts. Her skirt was torn and soiled; her stockings were in strips; her knees were bruised. But as she rose to her feet and once more searched the riddle of a crag-broken world, her heart was light with thankfulness. ”

“ Let God's curse come into his bowels like water and swell him as with a dropsy, and let it soak like oil into his bones. The word of the curse is quick and powerful, and divides between the joints and the marrow; it works powerfully and effectually; it fastens on the soul; it is a piercing thing, and there is no antidote against it. Let is compass him on every side as a garment, v. 19. Let God's cursing him be his shame, as his cursing his neighbour was his pride ”

“ When he lays the lashes of the scourge on his flesh—it may be on his carious bones—he does it not for his own sins alone, but for the sins of the whole world; and in his searching, self-imposed humiliations, there is a silent, broad out-reaching of sympathetic effort in behalf of all his kind. Sorrow may not depict itself freely on his face. If a suffering invalid, he must manifest no interest in the progress of his malady, feel no concern regarding the result. ”

“ And while I stood thus rooted to the ground, the sweat standing in large drops on my forehead, all at once close to me sounded a cry, fine and clear at first, and rising at the end to a shriek so loud, piercing, and unearthly in character that the blood seemed to freeze in my veins, and a despairing cry to heaven escaped my lips ”

“ Now perhaps you will ask me what is understood by cursing and the uttering of imprecations. It means, my dear brethren, cursing a person or a thing or an animal in moments of anger or despair. It is wishing to destroy him or to make him suffer. The Holy Ghost tells us that the person who has the ready curse in his mouth should greatly fear, lest God should grant him what he desires. There are some who have the Devil always on their tongues, who consign to him everything which annoys them. ”

“ Lear, on his knees, bareheaded, with heavenward eye, quivering lip, and hands clasped together in agony, pronounced the terrible curse, and in his death realised all that can be imagined of human woe. ”

“ In vain he entreated them not to kill themselves, and assured them that heaven would be satisfied, and that human nature could not endure beyond a certain point. No answer but the loud sound of the scourges, which are many of them of iron, with sharp points that enter the flesh. ”

“ A beggar sits on the ground removing a bandage from a festering sore, and a boy, with an expression on his face of exasperated distress, scratches his head and chest. Meanwhile an old woman sits looking up in worshipful gratitude at the face of the queen, who possibly returns her gaze. For she is turning her head away from the business in which she is engaged, as well as she may, since the head she is bathing shows a disgusting sore. ”

“ The curse has fell; and I hain't able to see John here or Marthy here or the hand here before my face here. But listen what I got to say about it. I'm able to hate and to curse as good as God. And I do! I hate and curse the Hand that, after taking all else I loved, snatched from my bosom the one little yoe lamb I treasured thar; I hate and curse Him that expected me to set down tame and quiet under such cruelty and onjestice; I hate and curse and defy the Power that hated and spited me enough, atter darkening the light of my life, to put out the sight of my eyes! ”

“ He knew the exact details of the scourging, the scoffing, the taunts, the torture, the crucifixion; and to a sensitive soul the hour of approach to a great untried agony is often the hour of bitterest trial. It is when we foresee a great trouble in the dimness of to-morrow that our undisciplined hearts grow faint and fail us. But he who had long foreseen—who had counted in advance—every humiliation, [164] every sorrow, and every pain, spoke at the same time of his joy as an overflowing fullness. ”

“ And still I writhed and moaned, "The curse, the curse,
Than animated death, can death be worse?"
"Dark child of sorrow, mine no less, what art
Of mine can make thee see and play thy part?
The key to all strange things is in thy heart." ”

“ The old woman's curses took wing and flew up to heaven in a trice; so that, notwithstanding what the proverb says, "For a woman's curse you are never the worse," and "The coat of a horse that has been cursed always shines," she rated the prince so soundly that he well-nigh jumped out of his skin. ”

“ I feel no reluctance, my friends to be thus explicit. Time was, when these emotions would be hidden with immeasurable solicitude, from every human eye. Alas! these airy and fleeting impulses of shame are gone. My scruples were preposterous and criminal. They are bred in all hearts, by a perverse and vicious education, and they would still have maintained their place in my heart, had not my portion been set in misery. My errors have taught me thus much wisdom; that those sentiments which we ought not to disclose, it is criminal to harbour. ”

“ The mother sees her son—idolized in her rough way—taken from her; the den of a home becomes doubly wretched, and the cursed drink-fiend is invoked to charm the sorrow away. That is the first step, 'to drown sorrow.' The steps after that are easy to count. ”

“ Paler than the dead who lay so still in their quiet rest in the churchyard; colder than the very touch of death itself; rigid as the body when the breath has gone forever; there he stood, the epitome of awful fear. With eyeballs starting from their sockets, open mouth, dilated nostrils, he seemed the very personification of incredulous horror. ”

“ Spirit, is there a peculiar flavor in what you sprinkle from your torch?
Spir. There is. My own.
Scro. I notice that you sprinkle it to restore good humor, and over dinners. Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day?
Spir. To any kindly given. To a poor one most.
Scro. Why to a poor one most?
Spir. Because it needs it most.
Enter Ignorance and Want; approaching the Spirit, they kneel at his feet. Scrooge starts back appalled. ”

“ As this old evil and serpent's sting is the same in all, we all are enabled to seek earnestly the same surgeon and apply the means of recovery which He prescribes for such evil, to ourselves and our youth. For withoutrecovery we cannot reach peace, for the worm that forever gnaws our conscience through the serpent's sting leads to eternal damnation. May God mercifully assist us all, that we may not neglect the promise to enter into His rest, and none of us remain behind. ”

“ His sores bred worms, the scabs were like clods of dust, and his skin was broken; so evil was the disease which cleaved fast to him. See what vile bodies we have, and what little reason we have to pamper them or be proud of them; they have in themselves the principles of their own corruption: as fond as we are of them now, the time may come when we may loathe them and long to get rid of them. ”

“ But that is not the worst: as each member of our house succeeds to the ancestral rank and honours, he must seek an interview with 'The Curse,' as it has been styled for generations. And, in that interview, it is decided whether the spell is to be broken and the Curse depart from us for ever—or whether it is to continue its blighting influence, and hold yet another life in miserable thraldom.'
'And are you one of its thralls then, papa?' faltered Chlorine. ”

“ Sprague went on hotly, “understanding to sanction suicide and premature burial, then I'm sorry, but I certainly don't understand. You carry that picture round your neck and in your mind's eye; you see her always as she appeared to you in the old days; you worship her image—do you understand?—not her, but her memory. If you could see her now—why, she has probably developed the temper of a fiend; she has grown fat and coarse; she has three children; she may have had some disease that has disfigured her for life—smallpox—anything. ”

“ Of the desolations which it occasions, enough is known to excite the abhorrence and execration of mankind; but that innumerable instances of its barbarities lie concealed in impenetrable obscurity, we may reasonably infer from the mournful cases that are accidentally brought to light. The death of the victim seals up, in perpetual silence, the history of his sufferings; and even those tales of horror that are rescued from oblivion, can do little more than extort the sigh of commiseration, and urge humanity to shed her tears. The biography of James Scurry is an instance of this description. ”

“ May the holy and eternal Virgin Mary, mother of God, curse him.—May St. Michael the advocate of holy souls, curse him.—May all the angels and archangels, principalities and powers, and all the heavenly armies, curse him." [Our armies swore terribly in Flanders, cried my uncle Toby,—but nothing to this.—For my own part, I could not have a heart to curse my dog so.] ”

“ But if you in your pain call birth an affliction and the support of the flesh a curse written upon your brow, then I answer that naught but the sweat of your brow shall wash away that which is written. You have been told also life is darkness, and in your weariness you echo what was said by the weary. ”

“ Might you not have charged the misery of your eternal condemnation upon me, and said, The curse we are doomed to bear, thoughtless man, might, perchance, have been prevented by you? You saw us when riding by our camp lying in ignorance, and unbelief: you might have rode up to us, and imparted instruction to our perishing souls ”

“ Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.
“Man,” said the Ghost, “if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child. ”

“ At a stroke the curse of Eve was removed, that multiplied sorrow of sorrows, representing in all ages the very apotheosis of pain. The knife has been robbed of its terrors, and the hospitals are no longer the scenes of those appalling tragedies that made the stoutest quail. ”

“ Her head, of the pure classical mould, is bent forward, as if weighed down by the shock, and there is a heavy drooping in the mouth and eyelids, that denotes a sudden and sickening agony. It is not a violent, passionate grief, but a deep and almost paralyzing emotion—a shock from which the soul will finally rebound, strengthened to make the sacrifice. ”

“ Oh, my seven hundred thousand curses on you—the curse of the weak and of the strong—the curse of the poets and of the bards upon you! The curse of the priests on you and the friars! The curse of the bishops upon you, and the Pope! The curse of the widows on you, and the children! Open! (He beats on the door again and again.)
Sheamus. I am thankful to ye, neighbours; and Oona will be thankful to ye to-morrow. Beat away, you vagabond! Do your dancing out there with yourself now! Isn't it a fine thing for a man to be listening to the storm outside, and himself quiet and easy beside the fire? ”

“ It remains no longer, but to mock my sense and scoff at my sorrow, to rend my bosom with a woe, complicated, matchless and inexpressible. The cheek is pale and livid; the eyes are sunk and circled with blackness. Corruption and ruin have already seized their prey and turned it into horror. ”