Juniata sentinel and Republican. [volume] (Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pa.) 1873-1955, 1888-06-27
A LIVING DEATH.
Peculiar Outcome of the Environ
ments OF Our Great Cities.

Peculiar Outcome of the Environ
ments of Our Great Cities.
On these sunny mornings, when the
atmosphere Is cool and bracIng, one
sees here and there on the streets a
man crawling along aided by crutch
or cane. He is usually bent forward,
his progress is slow, difficult and pain
full. His feet drag with a shuttle on
the surface of the pavement. His bafr
Is gray, although his countenance may
not indicate more than middle age.
There are evidences of pain in his
features. There are wrinkles and con-
fractions that are the cicatrices of
wounds incurred in fierce life strug-
giles. The eyes express a comming
ling of weakness and despair. His
shoulders droop, and his entire figure
has a bagginess suggestive of col
lapse. On his shrunken lips are hints
of pleading helplessness.
When he speaks it is with hesitation
and a muffied tone. His utteranceS
come with difficulty; they are low,
choked, broken. His speech halts at
short intervals as if at a loss for the
proper word. Often he cannot find il,
and frequently an unwanted and
strange term, wholly without meaning,
will thrust itself in the hiatus. Pos
slbly one arm bangles at his side, loose
and limp as rope. Possibly one leg Is
dragged along as If it were foreign
| body. Perhaps one side or the other
of his mouth is drawn up with a line
that spreads out fan shaped into a Sc
ries of scar like shrinkages. His
glance, like his gait, is wabbling and
uncertain. Over his face Is spread an
expression that is a combination OF
imbecIlity and hope. He is an object
with qualities so peculiar, so indivldu-
allied, that one easily recognizes him
as the victim of some one OF the nu-
| merous forms of paralysis.
These specimens taking the morning
air, assisted by cane or crutch and
shutting along the sidewalk, are get
ting to be a frequent exhibition
Whether or not characteristic of other
points, they are getting to be an in
creasing feature.
The men who no longer crawl out to
catch the glow and warmth of the
summer sun are nerveless as new born
| children. Their limbs are inert as
masses of gelatine. They are power
| less to move their muscles, and have to
| be lifted. turned, taken up and down
| like babes. They must be fed, and the
wants of nature cared for as II they
were pulling infants in the nurse
arms.
This new disease is a peculiar out
come of the environment of our great
cities. The atmosphere OF this region
is filed with malaria which eX-
| hausts, pTcstrates, paralyzes those
whose overworked bodies are forced to
| inhale il. Its victims are not the old
who have reached the allotted span OF
| their life, nor those enteebled by age
or heredIty, but the men with active
brains, intense energy, boundless ambi-
| ton and restless effort. 1t Is In the
nature of a rot which affects not the
| green, the immature, but the ripened
| fruit. 1t attacks the men who labor
by day and dream of work by night; it
| is a sting which pierces not the drones,
but the workers in tine human hives.
The idler slowly disintegrates and
disappears, He passes from a lethargic
| life into death with as little conscious
ness and suffering as attend the natural
demise of a mollusk. He IS an lmple-
| ment that rusts from disuse; the tire
less brain worker is a machine, driven
at high rate of speed, with no stop
pages for repairs, which carries tre-
mendous pressure, and some DAY eX-
plodes and Is blown into fragments.
Over a quarter of a century ago
there came a young man from an
eastern State, who in time located III
| Chicago. He was finely educated, am
bilious, industrious, energetic and
ready and willing to devote himself to
any honorable employment. He soon
| secured a situation as principal OF one
| of the public schools
Further on he gave up teaching and
connected himself with journalism.
He was for several years a valued at
| tache of this journal, during which
time he showed himself capable, inde-
| fatigable, prompt, and the possessor OF
| a high order of intellect. vi a religious
nature he later accepted an offer to take
charge of prominent denomlnational
weekly issued in this same city, and
became its chief writer and managerial
assistant. and for many years filled his
place with credit to himself and the
periodical with which lie was connec-
ted.
Such was Leander Stone, principal
of a public school, reporter on the Chi
cago Times and afterward one OF the
powers that controlled the great Meth
odist journal. the Northwestern. Chris
tfan Advocate. The face and figure of
no man in Chicago were better known
than those of Leander Stone during all
these years
A few months ago, having just
passed into a ripe middle age and in
the very height of his popularity and
usefulness, he felt one day a numb
ness in one of his arms. 1t extended
slowly till the whole arm was involved
and then 1t crept into the other arm,
aud so on and on, little at time,
| till it had permeated and possessed his
entire limbs and torso. His head alone
escaped. The last time l saw him,
all below his neck was a dead mass 50
far as motion is concerned.
Like one of Dante's damned, he was
imprisoned in ice to his chm. And
vet the savage destiny that has thus
imprisoned him did not have the
mercy to deprive the inclosed mass OF
sensation. Along its nerves travel in
cessant poignant pains, which are be-
yond reach and beyond remedy.
Strangely enough, in this grotesque
UNPARALLELED infiictIon his head and
face remain untouched. His brain Is
as clear as in his palmiest intellectual
DAYS, and he reads with his old avidity
and thinks and reasons with his old
time clearness.
His DIstaste Made Him Sick.