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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF PEL . VERJUICE . CHAPTER V »
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What , lingering still ? Upon the ocean ' s threshold , Sir , I stand ; And gaze across its billows : and beyond , Where earth confines , and rugged cliffs forbid His rolling conquest : —to the inner lands I ' m borne by fancy , now—and verdant hills , And dreary wastes , and yawning gulfs , — Beauty and richness so commingling there With frowns of art and nature , dash my thoughts With fear that holds me pausing ere I fly .
So , then , I was on board a tender : mingled in the destinies of a pressgang-gathered herd . I had bound myself in the chains which fettered and galled , indiscriminately , the worthy and the vile ; the reckless and semi-savage , with the prudent and the instructed : for among that collection of imprisoned and miserable beings , there were the instructed ; there were the morally pure as well as the wickedly depraved , the hardened in vice and the shrinking from contamination ; and nothing but an inborn heroism of resolution , and inflexible spirit , could have escaped untainted after immersion in that foul reservoir ; and few things ever showed more strongly the natural preponderance of good in man , than the fact that they could , and did come forth uncontaminated . But was I to be associated with , an ingredient in , such foul admixture ? No , no ; then I did not dream of this . At first I entertained no dread of the probability of such degradation . Degradation ? Could I be degraded ? Could I sink lower than I was in my original condition ? Was it possible that human beings existed , who
were by any circumstance placed in a lower scale of social estimation than myself ? I—degraded ? I could not be degraded : I was down as low as accident or nature could sink humanity . I had never seen the being compounded of the materials of which God ' s images are fashioned , whom 1 could have regarded with other glances than those of deference . Yet here I was at once elevated to a pinnacle of incalculable height above creatures of the same flesh and blood with myself . In all my dreams , I had formed nothing earthly that could parallel the occupants of that dreadful den . But , struck into utter
¦ L M . gasping dismay as I was by what I saw , not the remotest supposition , nor shadow of a fear that such men were at any time or in any place to be my companions , crossed my senses . They were of another world—a world to me unapproachable—an impassable gulf lay between us . Hut time and place did come—over that impassable gulf I was soon thrown—I was not long in learning that I was one of themselves : I was soon taught to expect the horror of companionship with
them—if that shuddering contact of body , similarity of pursuits , and equality of conditions , while all the mind and soul are absent , or present only in sickening aversion , can be called companionship . Not yet—not yet was I to know this misery—it was deferred awhile . In the midst of sorrow and destitution , some commiserating spirit has ever addressed its sympathy to my sufferings , and anodyned my dis *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1833, page 691, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2624/page/31/
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