Here the blustering peace-man and professed non-resistant, railed with a noisy insolence, rendered more insufferably insulting in the precise ratio of exemption from personal accountability claimed by his pusillanimous doctrines. Here too, a notorious Abolitionist, with his tallow-skinned and generally-disgusting face, roared through gross lips his vulgar anathemas against the South, which had foolishly canonised this soulless and meddlesome non-resistant ruffian, in expressing their readiness to hang him, should he be caught within their territory.
Here the weak and puling sectary of some milk-and-water creed rolled up his rheumy eyes amidst the din, and sighed for horror of a “sad, wicked world.” Here the sharp animal eyes, the cool effrontery and hard-faced impudence of ignoramus Professors of all sorts of occult sciences, ologies, and isms, met you, with hungry glances that seemed searching for “the green” in your eye; and mingled with the whole, a sufficiently spicy sprinkle of feminine “Professors,” of the same class, whose bold looks and sensual faces were quite sufficient offsets to the extreme etherialisation of their spiritualized doctrines.
Here, in a word, the blank and ever-shocking glare of harmless and positive idiocy absolutely would escape notice at all, or be mistaken for the solid repose of common sense, in contrast with the unnatural sultry wildness of the prevailing and predominating expression!
But this menagerie of mad people held caged, in one of its upper rooms, the object of immediate interest. On entering the apartment, which was an ordinary boarding-house bedchamber, a scene at once shocking and startling was presented. A female, seemingly about thirty-three, was stretched upon a low cot-bed, near the middle of the floor, while on the bed and upon the floor were scattered napkins, which appeared deeply saturated with blood, with which the pillow-case and sheet were also stained. A napkin was pressed with a convulsive clutch of the hands to her mouth, into which, with a low, suffocating cough, which now and then broke the silence, she seemed to be throwing up quantities of blood from what appeared an alarming hemorrhage.
A gentleman, whose neat apparel and fresh benevolent face somehow spoke “physician!” leaned over the woman, with an expression of anxiety, which appeared to be subdued by great effort of a trained will. He bent lower, and in an almost whispered voice, said:
“My dear madam, you must restrain yourself. This hemorrhage continues beyond the reach of any remedies, so long as you permit this violent excitement of your maternal feelings to continue. Let me exhort you to patience—to bear the necessary evils of your unfortunate condition with more patience!”
The only answer was a slow despairing shake of the head, accompanied by a deep hysterical groan, which seemed to flood the napkin at her mouth with a fresh effusion of blood, which now trickled between her fingers and down upon her breast. The humane physician turned, with an uncontrollable expression of horrified sympathy and alarm upon his face, and snatching a clean napkin from the table, gently removed the saturated cloth from the clutching pressure of her fingers, and tenderly wiping the blood from her mouth and person, left the clean one in her grasp.
“Be calm! be calm—I pray you! you must some day escape his persecutions. You have friends; they will assist you to obtain a divorce yet, and rescue your child from his clutches. Do, pray now, be calm!” The voice of the good man trembled with emotion while he spoke, and the perspiration started from his forehead.
At this instant the door was suddenly thrown open, and a tall, gaunt man, with a very small round head, leaden eyes, and a wide ungainly mouth, with a projecting under jaw, singularly expressive of animal stolidity, paused on the threshold and coolly looked around the room. The woman sprang forward at the sight, as if to rise, while a fresh gush of blood poured from her mouth, bedabbling her fingers and the sheet. The physician instinctively seized her to prevent her rising, but, resisting the pressure by which he gently strove to restore her head to the pillow, she retained her half-erect position, and with eyes that had suddenly become strangely distorted, or awry in their sockets, she glared towards the intruder for an instant, and then slowly raising her flickering hand, which dripped with her own blood, she pointed at him, and muttered, in a sepulchral voice, that, besides, seemed choking:
“That is he! see him! see him! There stands the monster who would rob me of my babe, as he daily robs me of money.” Here the blood gushed up again, and she was for a moment suffocated into silence, as the object of her denunciation stood perfectly unmoved, while a cold smile half lit his leaden eyes. This seemed to fill the apparently dying woman with renewed and hysterical life. She raised herself yet more erect, and still pointing with her bloody, quivering finger, while her head tossed to and fro, and the distorted eyes glared staringly out before her, she spoke in a gasping, uncertain way, as if communing with herself. “The wretch taunts me! my murderer dares to sneer! O God! must this always continue? must that brute always follow me up and down in the land, to rob me of the money that I earn—to be my tyrant, my jailor! He will not give me money to pay postage even, out of that I earn abundantly, while he is earning nothing. He will not give me clothes to keep me decent, while I earn enough. He will not give my child shoes to wear, though he is trying to take her from me!”