No doubt the man who meditates upon
his own crime or folly at the very moment when he is suffering from its
sharp recalcitrations, is just about as miserable a wretch as the
reformatory of the world can present; but when, to the effects upon
himself, he is compelled to think of the cruelty he has exercised
towards others--and those perhaps found out to be his best friends--we
doubt if there are any words beyond the vocabulary of the condemned that
are sufficient to express his anguish. Even this did not comprehend all
the suffering of Mr. Dodds, for, was he not under doom without knowing
what form it was to assume, whether the spectre (whose cookery might be
a sham) would choke him, burn him, or run away with him?
Deeply steeped in this remorseful contemplation, during which the figure
of his ill-used wife flitted before the eye of his fancy with scarcely
less of substantial reality than she had shown in her spectral form, he
found that he had lost all regard to time. The night was fast setting
in, the shadows of the tall houses were falling deeper and deeper on the
room, and the Sabbath stillness was a solemn contrast to the
perturbations inside the chamber of his soul, where "the serpents and
the cockatrices would not be charmed.
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