isa-normaladvance-1909-00038

Description:	38THE NORMAL ADVANCElaboratory, I had without thought of feelingof mercy, or pity, laid some struggling bit oflife on the rack before me pursued with thesame breathless interest I had taken the scalpel,and with firm hand dissected even my favoritepets in the mad desire to wrest from Nature herchoicest secrets.Returning, I say, from this night trip, I entered my lonely apartment. Cheerless, the roomI entered, on the fifth floor of a tenement housein San Franciscq. Bare enough when I firsttook it, the room had found little attention atmy hands.The fire in the cracked stove had long sinceburned itself out, and a mass of charred coalsand sodden ashes greeted the feeble light of mysmoky lamp, as a faint gleam managed to siftthrough the broken, crooked, stove pipe. Thefire was fully lighted with a rejected manuscriptof a story which had cost me hours of labor,days of toil and sacrifice. Ah, well,the worlddid not appreciate the labor—as well feed theprecious sheets to the hunger of the flames.As I placed the coal within the stove I observed that my scanty supply was exhausted.Whence was more to come? No money, norprospects for any. Yet my studies must bepursued, and for common labor, I was unfitted.The fire once burning, I settled myself for anight with my loved masters—for in all mydegradation, I still held to a few of those oldmasterpieces of the worlds literary art. Wornout, disgusted with humanity, I found my onlysource of comfort in those silently eloquentvolumes.Like Manfred, I had paid the penalty forabandonment of human sympathy and,Though I wore the form,I had no sympathy with breathing flesh.And this night, as I sat before my meagerfire, there arose within my breast a mightypassion. Rising, I paced the floor, fightingagainst the temptation that clutched me in thismoment of weakness. There was one relief—if relief it were, to gain surcease from sorrowfor one short hour, only to be plunged, onawakening, yet deeper into the burning, burdening, hardening, maddening hell of existence.More and more frequently of late months hadI drank to deep excess. As friends and acquaintances had dropped from my life, thehabit tightened its grip on me. On this nightI fought hard, for had I not seen, but a fewhours since, a home wrecked by the craze fordrink? Ah, poor blind Jessie, from whom Ihad just returned—her mother killed by adrunken husband. As I spoke the unfelt wordsof comfort to the child, bending low over themangled form of her mother, there was almostaroused in me the feelings of love and sympathy.Then came to my mind the words of my oldaunt back East when last I saw her: Jack,let me advise you. You are becoming too hardened and self centered in your scientific and literary research. By human sympathy alonemay the soul rise to its highest flights.Too late! Vain to struggle. You who ha venever known the damning force of unholy passion or appetite, be merciful to your brotherswho fall in lifes stern conflict. My last moneyhad gone for the bottle of whiskey which satalone above on the shelf. From it I filled alarge tumbler to the brim and with tremblinghands lifted it to my lips. What strange impulse led me to dash the glass to the floor andthe next moment seek to save the spent liquorfrom the dirty floor?Perhaps the thought of the tragedy of theraving murderer and his victims, his mangledwife and bereaved daughter, fromwhom I hadbut come. But why should this affect me?These scenes were all too common. To me suchwere merely types of struggling life, to bestudied in complacent disregard by the philosopher.Again, the fact came to me. I, too, was amurderer, and the fact that I was blameless sofar as law could tell, the story but intensifiedmy self-horror. I had crushed the spirit andbroken the heart of my beloved Myrtle. Andthe vision of her as she lay still and cold in theembrace of death has never left me.The learned doctors and specialists of her
Source:	http://indstate.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/isuarchive/id/34068
Collection:	Indiana State University Archives

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