The Vancouver independent. (Vancouver, W.T. [Wash.]) 1875-1910, 1880-09-09
Petrified While Alive.

several gentlemen, "was that Of man
whose death could not affect his rela-
tions, because he had none but the
manner of his dying was so awful that
it was call upon common humanity
for sorrow. He was young fellow
who, at the breaking out Of the war,
when he was twenty years old, enlisted
and fought with courage under Confed-
crate banners. His gallantry was so
marked that he was promoted from the
ranks and became a captain, with the
prospect of further advancement as the
war progressed. In the terrible war
fare about Nashville in the Winter of
1856 he was exposed to the rains and
colds, and contracted infammatory
rheumatism, from which he never re-
covered, and which caused his resigna.
ton. He returned to his home miser-
able creature, and never was able after
ward to walk. For fifteen long years
he was dy ing as slowly and surely, and
with as much torture, as the most re-
fined cruelties of human invention
might have produced.
"Do you know what intiammatory
rheumatism is No. Well, imagine
that you were lying perfectly still, with
not a muscle in play, and the most ex-
cruciating pains shooting like barbed
hooks through every limb and joint.
You try, in the delirium of agony, TO as
sumo another position. The mere move
ment of joint is such an awful cruelty
that the rack is an infant horro, by the
side Of it. The inflammation seems to
have tuned every nerve and muscle to
the most delicate pitch of sensibility,
and if each nerve in the body were
barred and torn simultaneously, the pain
could not be greater Moments become
hours and hours become ages of suffer
ing. Imagine these fortunes prolonged
through fifteen years Of time, every
year dragging out ike century, and
you can picture TO yourself what his
life was. Opiates OF course opiates
were administered but what Of the
moments when the influence had waned,
and when, rushing upon him ike wolves
OF torture made ravenous oy hunger,
the pains broke through the vail of in
sensibility and tugged at his frame with
teeth Of cruelty? The very immunity
which opium gave added another horror
when it was withdrawn. He was kept
under its influence as much as possible
In nine years lie had lost every power
of muscular effort. and sat in his chair
living corpse only to be moved to his
bed, where he became a mummy with
the spark Of life still glowing.
The time shortly came when lie no
longer lay in his bed, but, sitting III his
invalid chair, became the enthroned en-
bodiment OF soul TOO miserable for life,
too sacred to be freed by other hands.
If there We're in the Sphinx Of Egypt an
immortal soul and human Intelligence,
Can you fancy its torture Day after
day looking upon the same hot waste
fer centuries day after day with fixed
gazing upon a motion horror of sun and
not blind year after pitiless year smoth-
cred in an awful silence Which makes
every pain so exquisite that it almost
becomes audible to living prosecutor
SO he sat, year after year, with his mus
cles fixed in iron, his eyes looking upon
a world as dreary as misery could paint
it his voice sinking in his throat, only
to be expelled by hunted nature in wild
and piteous cries when the pain racked
into hopeless cowardice the strong heart
that had led his men up to the dreadful
caverns of cannons' mouths without
finch. But there came a time when the
restless days and nights of active torture
became to him as a delightful reminis-
csnce. The time came slowly and like
eternity. If You were to conhne a man
and let one drop OF water fall Oh his
head every five minutes, it would kill
him. But, before death, would come
years of suspense that would move like
the change Of fixed stars. There would
come that awful suspense of time when
the pitiless drop would fall like the crash
Of universe upon the doomed head.
1.-The time when the very life stood
still, and the soul was imprisoned in a
m..usoleum. Fixed and rigid, the poor
boy was a sphinx, endowed with life and
deprived Of movement. Every joint in
his body became ossitied by the chalky
deposits, and not even a movement that
provoked deathless agony became posi-
BILE. Even the joints of his neck became
rigid, ;he fingers stiff and the limbs pet
| rifie6' He wac n stnp.. fr.,,a MIL