Why didn’t they take a little of the immense sums they spend in marble blocks and shafts to rear monuments to him all over the world, to buy a few comforts for himself and his loved ones?
For what did almost his last letter state, he had writ to a friend askin’ some relief, for without it, he sez—
“If I die not of disease, I must perish of hunger.”
Heart-sick with the tyrrany of his employers, the little minds about him, who mebby rejoiced to tyrranize over and torment a soul so much above their own. Heart-sick with the neglect of the world, he fell asleep July 21st, 1795.
About a month before his death he writ to a friend—
“As to my individual self I am tranquil, but Burns’ poor widow and half a dozen of his dear little ones, helpless orphans. Here I am weak as a woman’s tear, ’tis half of my disease,” etc.
I should think Scotland would be ashamed of herself. I honestly should, to let her greatest pride and glory die of a broken heart, caused by her neglect and heartlessness, and then praise him up so and spend sech sums of money on his tombstones, and things (one hundred years too late).
But, then, it’s a trait in human nater. Scotland hain’t the only country that duz it.
It is nateral to torment and torture the soarin’ bird of Genius, and pluck out the plumage from its quiverin’ flesh one at a time—cut its feathers down, hang weights to its wings, and act.
And then when the agonized and heart-broken soul has took its flight out of the tortured body, to stuff that soulless effigy with the softest and warmest stuffin’ of praise and appreciation, put jewels in the blind eye sockets, cover the cold breast with diamond bright stars of praise, and lift it up on high, up on top of the soarinest monuments they can raise to its honor.