The Duke of Stockbridge: A Romance of Shays' RebellionBellamy, Edward
General
The Duke of Stockbridge: A Romance of Shays' Rebellion
Bellamy, Edward
Shays' Rebellion, 1786-1787 -- Fiction
Although Mrs. Poor movingly declared that “He warn't the shadder of
hisself,” the fact was, that having been but a short time in jail,
Zadkiel showed few marks of confinement, far enough was he, from
comparing in this respect, with the others, many of whom had been shut
up for years. They looked, with the dead whiteness of their faces
and hands, rather like grewsome cellar plants, torn from their native
darkness, only to wither in the upper light and air, than like human
organisms just restored to their normal climate. As they moved among the
tanned and ruddy-faced people, their abnormal complexion made them look
like representatives of the strange race of Albinos.
But saddest perhaps of all the sights were the debtors who found no
acquaintances or relatives to welcome them as they came forth again
helpless as at their first birth, into the world of bustle and sun
and breeze. It was piteous to see them wandering about with feeble and
sinewless steps, and vacant eyes, staring timidly at the noisy people,
and shrinking dismayed from the throngs of sympathizing questioners
which gathered round them. There were some whose names not even the
oldest citizens could recall so long had they been shut up from the
sight of men.
Jails in those days were deemed as good places as any for insane
persons, and in fact were the only places available, so that, besides
those whom long confinement had brought almost to the point of
imbecility, there were several entirely insane and idiotic individuals
among the prisoners. One of them went around in a high state of
excitement declaring that it was the resurrection morning. Nor was the
delusion altogether to be marvelled at considering the suddenness with
which its victim had exchanged the cell, which for twenty years had been
his home, for the bright vast firmament of heaven, with its floods of
dazzling light and its blue and bottomless dome.
Another debtor, a man from Sheffield, as a prisoner of war during the
revolution, had experienced the barbarities practiced by the British
provost Cunningham at New York. Having barely returned home to his
native village when he was thrust into jail as a debtor, he had not
unnaturally run the two experiences together in his mind. It was his
hallucination that he had been all the while a prisoner of the British
at New York, and that the victorious Continental army had just arrived
to deliver him and his comrades. In Perez he recognized General
Washington.
“Ye was a long time comin, Ginral, but it's all right now,” he said. “I
knowd ye'd come at las', an I tole the boys not to git diskerridged. The
redcoats has used us bad though, an I hope ye'll hang em, Gin'ral.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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