The Chautauquan, Vol. 03, February 1883: A Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Promotion of True Culture.; Organ of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle.Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
History
The Chautauquan, Vol. 03, February 1883: A Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Promotion of True Culture.; Organ of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle.
Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
Chautauqua Institution -- Periodicals; Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle -- Periodicals
But he that has a little tiny wit,
With heigh ho, the wind and rain!
Must make content with his fortune fit,
Though the rain it raineth every day:
and swearing it was a brave night to cool a lady’s pride.
Thus poorly accompanied this once great monarch was found by his ever
faithful servant, the good Earl of Kent, now transformed to Caius, who
ever followed close at his side, though the king did not know him to be
the earl; and he said, “Alas! sir, are you here? creatures that love
night love not such nights as these. This dreadful storm has driven
the beasts to their hiding places. Man’s nature can not endure the
affliction or the fear.” And Lear rebuked him, and said, these lesser
evils were not felt, where a greater malady was fixed. When the mind is
at ease, the body has leisure to be delicate; but the tempest in his
mind did take all feelings else from his senses, but of that which beat
at his heart. And he spoke of filial ingratitude, and said it was all
one as if the mouth should tear the hand for lifting food to it; for
parents were hands and food and everything to children.
But the good Cauis, still persisting in his entreaties that the king
would not stay out in the open air, at last persuaded him to enter a
little wretched hovel which stood upon the heath, where the fool first
entering, suddenly ran back terrified, saying he had seen a spirit.
But upon examination this spirit proved to be nothing more than a poor
Bedlam beggar, who had crept into this deserted hovel for shelter,
and with his talk about devils frighted the fool, one of those poor
lunatics who are either mad, or feign to be so, the better to extort
charity from the compassionate country people; who go about the country
calling themselves poor Tom and poor Turleygood, saying, “Who gives
anything to poor Tom?” sticking pins and nails and sprigs of rosemary
into their arms to make them bleed; with such horrible actions, partly
by prayers, and partly with lunatic curses, they move or terrify the
ignorant country folks into giving them alms. This poor fellow was such
a one; and the king seeing him in so wretched a plight, with nothing
but a blanket about his loins to cover his nakedness, could not be
persuaded but that the fellow was some father who had given all away to
his daughters, and brought himself to that pass; for nothing he thought
could bring a man to such wretchedness but the having unkind daughters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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