WATCH Sexy Elisha Cuthbert In Action  CLICK HERE for Instant Access Elisha Cuthbert Photos |
Elisha Cuthbert Photos Books: Martin Eden The Pickwick Papers The Sea Wolf |
pursuing a
headlong career, which must bring death to him, and shame to
her? Alas for human nature! You have anticipated it long since.
The measure of the unhappy womans misery and misfortune
was about to be completed. Numerous offences had been
committed in the neighbourhood; the perpetrators remained
undiscovered, and their boldness increased. A robbery of a daring
and aggravated nature occasioned a vigilance of pursuit, and a
strictness of search, they had not calculated on. Young Edmunds
was suspected, with three companions. He was apprehended--
committed--tried--condemned--to die.
The wild and piercing shriek from a womans voice, which
resounded through the court when the solemn sentence was
pronounced, rings in my ears at this moment. That cry struck a
terror to the culprits heart, which trial, condemnation--the
approach of death itself, had failed to awaken. The lips which
had been compressed in dogged sullenness throughout, quivered
and parted involuntarily; the face turned ashy pale as the cold
perspiration broke forth from every pore; the sturdy limbs of the
felon trembled, and he staggered in the dock.
In the first transports of her mental anguish, the suffering
mother threw herself on her knees at my feet, and fervently
sought the Almighty Being who had hitherto supported her in
all her troubles to release her from a world of woe and misery,
and to spare the life of her only child. A burst of grief, and a
violent struggle, such as I hope I may never have to witness
again, succeeded. I knew that her heart was breaking from
that hour; but I never once heard complaint or murmur escape
her lips.
It was a piteous spectacle to see that woman in the prison-yard
from day to day, eagerly and fervently attempting, by affection
and entreaty, to soften the hard heart of her obdurate son. It was
in vain. He remained moody, obstinate, and unmoved. Not even
the unlooked-for commutation of his sentence to transportation
for fourteen years, softened for an instant the sullen hardihood
of his demeanour.
But the spirit of resignation and endurance that had so long
upheld her, was unable to contend against bodily weakness and
infirmity. She fell sick. She dragged her tottering limbs from the
bed to visit her son once more, but her strength failed her, and
she sank powerless on the ground.
And now the boasted coldness and indifference of the young
man were tested indeed; and the retribution that fell heavily upon
him nearly drove him mad. A day passed away and his mother
was not there; another flew by, and she came not near him; a
third evening arrived, and yet he had not seen her--, and in four-
and-twenty hours he was to be separated from her, perhaps for
ever. Oh! how the long-forgotten thoughts of former days rushed
upon his mind, as he almost ran up and down the narrow yard--
as if intelligence would arrive the sooner for his hurrying--and
how bitterly a sense of his helplessness and desolation rushed
upon him, when he heard the truth! His mother, the only parent
he had ever known, lay ill--it might be, dying--within one mile
of the ground he stood on; were he free and unfettered, a few
minutes would place him by her side. He rushed to the gate, and
grasping the iron rails with the energy of desperation, shook it
till it rang again, and threw himself against the thick wall as if to
force a passage through the stone; but the strong building
mocked his feeble efforts, and he beat his hands together and
wept like a child.
I bore the mothers forgiveness and blessing to her son in
prison; and I carried the solemn assurance of repentance, and his
fervent supplication for pardon, to her sick-bed. I heard, with
pity and compassion, the repentant man devise a thousand little
plans for her comfort and support when he returned; but I knew
that many months before he could reach his place of destination,
his mother would be no longer of this world.
He was removed by night. A few weeks afterwards the poor
womans soul took its flight, I confidently hope, and solemnly
believe, to a place of eternal happiness and rest. I performed the
burial service over her remains. She lies in our little churchyard.
There is no stone at her graves head. Her sorrows were known to
man; her virtues to God.
it had been arranged previously to the convicts departure,
that he should write to his mother as The Pickwick Papers page 36 The Pickwick Papers page 38 |