The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1878-06-15

IlIee udyS eacn person ate DuSnel VI
grain, without counting meat and veg
etables, and drank a barrel of beer, to
say nothing of Geneva and brandy.
confess for my part that find it
hard to believe this, but all the same
the world was never so happy and no
body suspected Misery of being the
cause of this universal felicity; Misery
did not boast of it, from Modesty.
All went well for ten, twenty, thirty
years; but at the end of thirty years it
was not rare thing to see old men Of
10 and 120 years, which ordinarily is
the age of the most extreme decrepl-
tude. Now these last, loaded down
with intirmities, with memory gone,
blind and deaf, deprived of taste, feel
ing and smell, insensible of the slight
est enjoyment, began to find that i'm
mortality is not at all the great bless
ing which it had been at first thought
to be. They were seen dragging them
selves along in the sun, bent double
over their staffs, with hoary locks,
shaking heads, sightless eyes, cough
ing, tottering, their flesh gone, out of
shape, withered up, like SO many enor-
nous snails. The women were even
more horrible than the men.
The feeblest of the old men kept their
beds, and there was not a house where
you did not find five or six beds where
the ancestors babbled, to the great
WEAKNESS of their great-grandsons and
the sons of their great-grandsons
They were even obliged to get them
together in immense hospitals, where
each new generation was occupied in
taking care of the preceding ones who
could not be cured of life. More than
this, as there were no longer any wills
made, nobody inherited anything, and
the new generations possessed nothing
of their own, all the property belonging
by law to the great-grandfather and
the neutrality-suspicious. who could
not enjoy it.
Under invalid Kings, governments
grew weak, laws relaxed, and soon the
immortals, sure of not being punished
after death, gave themselves up to every
crime; they pillaged, robbed, but, alas,
they could not kill!
In every kingdom the cry /" Long live
the Kingn' became seditious cry, and
was forbidden under the severest pen
alties, with the exception of the penalty
of death. This was not all. As the
animals did not die any more than the
men, soon the earth was so overrun
with inhabitants that it could not nour-
ish them; then came terrible famine,
and men, wandering half naked through
In hnII C fDt g
their heads, suffered cruelty from hun
ger, without being able to die of it.
If Misery had only known of this
frightful state of things she would not
have been willing to prolong it, even
at the price of life, but, accustomed of
old to privations and infrmities, she
and Faro suffered less from them than
others; and then they had become, as it
were, deaf and blind, and Misery did
not take much account of what was
going on about her.
Then men set themselves to work
with as much ardor to seek their final
end as they had hitherto done to avoid
it. They had recourse to the most sub
tie poisons and the most deadly weap-
ons; but weapons and poisons only in
Iured their bodies without destroying
Them.
Formidable wars were decreed. With
common accord, in order to render one
another the service of mutual destruc-
ton, nations rushed to arms, each
against the other; but they inflicted the
most frightful calamities without sue
ceeding in killing single man. A
Congress of Death was assembled; the
doctors flocked to it from the four quar-
tiers of the globe; there came white,
black, yellow and copper-colored; and
they all sought together for a remedy
against life, without beng able to find
it. A prize of 10000, 900 was offered
to whomsoever it might be that should
discover it; all the doctors wrote PAM
phlets on life, as they used to do on
cholera, and they did not cure this dis
ease any more than the other.
1t was more dreadful calamity than
the deluge, for it lasted longer, and
there appeared no sign of its ever COM
ing to an end.
Now, at this time, there was in Condo
a most learned physician, who spoke
almost altogether in Latin, and whom
they called DR.. De Profundis. He was
a most worthy man, who, in the good
old time, had helped off many poor
body into the other world, and who
now was disguised at being unable to
cure anyone. One evening, when he
was coming from dining with the Mayor
of Vicq, he lost his way in the marsh.
Chance brought him near Misery's gar
den, and he heard a plaintive voice,
which said:
"Oh, who will set me free, and who
will deliver the land from immortality
a hundred times worse than the pesti-
lencer'
The learned doctor lifted up his eyes,
and his delight was only equaled by his
he had recognized Death
"What, is it you, my old friend
said he, "quid agiS IN htc pyro perched?
What are you doing up there in the
pear tree?"
Nothing at all, DR.. De Profundis,
and that's what makes me so unhap-
py," replied Death; "lend me your
hand to get down"
The good doctor gave HIM his hand,
and Death made such an effort to get
himself out of the tree that he lifted
the doctor off the ground.
The pear tree Immediately seized
II old of him onJ hold hin, IN ;ts