When he had been living in the Bartell home a little more than a year, he
broke his leg. He sustained the injury through playing on the forbidden
roof—as all boys have done and will continue to do to the end of time.
The leg was broken in two places between the knee and thigh. Emil,
helped by his frightened playmates, managed to drag himself to the front
sidewalk, where he fainted. The children of the neighbourhood were
afraid of the hard-featured shrew who presided over the Bartell house;
but, summoning their resolution, they rang the bell and told Ann Bartell
of the accident. She did not even look at the little lad who lay
stricken on the sidewalk, but slammed the door and went back to her
wash-tub. The time passed. A drizzle came on, and Emil Gluck, out of
his faint, lay sobbing in the rain. The leg should have been set
immediately. As it was, the inflammation rose rapidly and made a nasty
case of it. At the end of two hours, the indignant women of the
neighbourhood protested to Ann Bartell. This time she came out and
looked at the lad. Also she kicked him in the side as he lay helpless at
her feet, and she hysterically disowned him. He was not her child, she
said, and recommended that the ambulance be called to take him to the
city receiving hospital. Then she went back into the house.
It was a woman, Elizabeth Shepstone, who came along, learned the
situation, and had the boy placed on a shutter. It was she who called
the doctor, and who, brushing aside Ann Bartell, had the boy carried into
the house. When the doctor arrived, Ann Bartell promptly warned him that
she would not pay him for his services. For two months the little Emil
lay in bed, the first month on his back without once being turned over;
and he lay neglected and alone, save for the occasional visits of the
unremunerated and over-worked physician. He had no toys, nothing with
which to beguile the long and tedious hours. No kind word was spoken to
him, no soothing hand laid upon his brow, no single touch or act of
loving tenderness—naught but the reproaches and harshness of Ann Bartell,
and the continually reiterated information that he was not wanted. And
it can well be understood, in such environment, how there was generated
in the lonely, neglected boy much of the bitterness and hostility for his
kind that later was to express itself in deeds so frightful as to terrify
the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account