Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1890-09-12
A SORROWFUL LIFE,
The PItiful story OF Joseph Merrlck, tho
Elephant Man.

We can remember no invented tale,
says the London Speaker, that sneaks
30 to the heart ut once of the cruelty OF
life and the beauty of human com.
passion. as the true story closed this
week by sentence in the newspapers
announcing. that Joseph Merrick, the
I elephant man." was dead.
Imagine human soul clothed in o
body SO unspeakably frightful that see
! ing it men turned sick with loathine
and women tainted; being who had to
be conveyed from place to place in Sc.
eret; who hardly dared to venture
abroad even by night; who, finding his
fellow-creatures ran from him, grew
terrified by the terror he created, and
shuddered in dark corners like hunt.
ed beast. Imagine him driven by
starvation to accept showman's offer
and be exhibited TO the most brutal of
audiences, that commonly enough
shrieked and ran pell-mel from the
tent as soon as the curtain was drawn.
Early in 1886 Frederick Treves, one
of the surgeons of the London hos
pital, found Merrick in a penny show,
in room off the Whtechapel road,
crouching behind an old curtain and
trying to warm himself over n brick
that was heated by a gas-jet. Mr..
Treves went up to him not only without
fear or loathing. but with sympathy.
For the first time in his life in twenty
four years Merrick heard kind
word and was spoken to like a
man. The effect was curious. 1t
made him afraid ut hrst. He shrank
as an ordinary man would from
something uncanny. Then. rs he
began TO realize the truth. he broke
into sobs of gratitude. Days and even
weeks passed, however before he re-
covered from the shock of hearing a
compassionate word.
The police prohibited his show on
the ground of public decency. So he
went to Belgium, where again the
police interfered, and where an agent
decamped with his poney. Merrick
was left destitute and starving in the
streets of foreign town, where the
ignorant mob thought him iiend.
He came back 10 London-how, no
one quite knows. At every station and
landing-place crowds logged him.
Steamers refused to have him on board.
But he come back TO London. because
in London lived the only man who had
ever given him kind word. He
made his way to the London hospital,
found Mr.. Treves, who had him lodged
for time in an attic in the hospital,
and determined to find permanent
shelter for him.
But now it was found that no insti-
tuition would receive him. The royal
hospital for incurables and the British
home for incurables alike declined to
take him in unless sufficient funds were
forthcoming to pay for his mainten-
ance for life. He himself begged that
he might be placed in blind hospital.
1t is hard to match the pathos of this
plea.
Then in November, 1886. Carr Comm,
the chairman of the London hospital.
wrote to the Times asking help for this
case. and the British public responded.
A room was built for Merrick on the
ground floor in remote wing of the
hospital, and there, surrounded with
books, flowers, and hundred tokens of
the kindness that is really quick in the
public heart, he has lived until this
last week.
He had found many friends - tho
Prince and Princess of Wales, Mr..
Gladstone. Mrs. Kendall and others.
To Mrs. Kendall is due the happy sug-
gestion that Merrick should be taken
to see the Christmas pantomime ut
Drury Lane. She engaged the royal
box; she had him brought TO the theatre,
and took every precaution that no
strange eye should see him. Hidden
from the house behind the curtains of
the box, the elephant man" tasted an
hour or two of intoxicating happiness.
1t was all real to him-the fairies, the
splendor and the Jewels.
Merrick, ia spite of his hideous exc
terror and terrible experiences. was in
his way Il gentle sentimentalist. and
gushed forth at times, under the happy
conditions of his life ut the hospital. in
verse modelled on the hymns of DR..
Watts. in which he gave utterancc to
feelings of gratitude, the sincereity of
which none ever questioned. 1t was
tender heart that was beating beneath
a mask more hideous than that of Or
son. ABOVE ALL it was heart that
WAS filled with love for the man who
was literally his saviour, who first spoke
kindly to him. who rescued him from
fate thousand times worse than
death, and to the end was both his
doctor and his friend. Recently it was
only Mr.. Treves who could thoroughly
understand the poor creatures MANNED
utterances; and to Mr.. Treves hc chung
to the last with the wiStful trust and
affection of II dumb animal.