Not one of my acquaintance, to whom I
imparted my situation, would grant me the least succor or regard,
on pretence of my being committed for theft; and my landlord
refused to part with some of my own clothes, which I sent for,
because I was indebted to him for a week's lodging. Overwhelmed
with calamity, I grew desperate, and resolved to put an end to my
grievances and life together; for this purpose I got up in the
middle of the night, when I thought everybody around me asleep, and
fixing one end of my handkerchief to a large hook in the ceiling
that supported the scales on which the hemp is weighed, I stood
upon a chair, and making a noose on the other end, put my neck into
it with an intention to hang myself; but before I could adjust the
knot, I was surprised and prevented by two women who had been awake
all the while, and suspected my design. In the morning my attempt
was published among the prisoners, and punished with thirty
stripes, the pain of which co-operating with my disappointment and
disgrace, bereft me of my senses, and threw me into an ecstasy of
madness, during which I tore the flesh from my bones with my teeth,
and dashed my head against the pavement.[179]
While Smollett mingled such scenes of misery with coarse adventures and
coarse humor, he is yet always true to nature and always picturesque.
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