| | 1 | Author: | Neal
John
1793-1876 | Add | | | Title: | Errata, or, The works of Will. Adams  | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | If there ever was a coward upon earth, I am one.
If God ever made a thing so contemptible, I was born
one. From my earliest recollection of myself, the
very name of death was frightful to me: and, when I
came to understand what it meant; and to see how it
fastened upon whatever I happened to love, so invisibly,
yet so fatally; how it altered whatever it touched, till
every body fled from it, even the mother from her babe;
how it affected the voices of men, when they spoke of it
—I began to feel—I hardly know how, toward it—it
was not as other children felt; not, as if death were a shadow,
or a power, the common enemy of our race—but,
I hated it with a bitterness and earnestness—and feared
it, with a fear, that kept my blood in a continual agitation—as
if it were a real, living creature; and my own
particular, deadly enemy. Nay, even now, with all
my experience, and discipline; notwithstanding all that
I have encountered, and suffered, in the hope of overcoming
this weakness of my nature; it is a fact, that the very
thought of death, when I am alone, is enough to
drive me distracted. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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