And In The Dark Hours Of The Night He Could Not Even Watch.
The Journals, The Only Receptacle Of His Confidences, Display The
Bitterness Of His Sufferings No Less Than The Greatness Of His Character.
'There Is No Contagion,' He Writes, 'equal To That Of Fear.
I have been
rendered furious when from anxiety I could not eat, I would find those at
the same table were in like manner affected.'
To the military anxieties was added every kind of worry which may weary
a man's soul. The women clamoured for bread. The townsfolk heaped
reproaches upon him. The quarrel with the British Government had cut him
very deeply. The belief that he was abandoned and discredited, that
history would make light of his efforts, would perhaps never know of them,
filled his mind with a sense of wrong and injustice which preyed upon his
spirits. The miseries of the townsfolk wrung his noble, generous heart.
The utter loneliness depressed him. And over all lay the shadow of
uncertainty. To the very end the possibility that 'all might be well'
mocked him with false hopes. The first light of any morning might reveal
the longed-for steamers of relief and the uniforms of British soldiers.
He was denied even the numbing anaesthetic of despair.
Yet he was sustained by two great moral and mental stimulants:
his honour as a man, his faith as a Christian. The first had put all
courses which he did not think right once and for all out of the question,
and so allayed many doubts and prevented many vain regrets.
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