But Roger's censure was slight compared with that which Mr. Jocelyn
visited upon himself; and in order to understand his feelings and
conduct, it will be necessary to relate some experiences which
occurred after the departure of his family to the country. Throughout
the entire winter he had been under a severe strain of business
anxiety, and then had come the culminating scenes of failure,
loss of income, and enforced and unhappy separation. His natural
depression had been so increased by the meagre prospect of finding
employment which would yield his family an adequate support, that
even his increased and more frequent indulgence in his morphia
powders failed to give sufficient hopefulness and courage, while at
the same time they began to produce some serious disorders in his
system. There is a class of diseases which rarely fails to attack
one whose system is reduced and enfeebled, and neuralgia began
to bind across his forehead a daily pressure of pain that at last
became intolerable. Ordinary remedies not giving speedy relief,
his physician injected into his arm a few drops of the solution
of morphia. Thus far he had never used the drug in solution
hypodermically, and he was much surprised by the agreeable effects
of a very much smaller quantity than he had been accustomed to
use on any one occasion, and his morphia hunger--already firmly
established--immediately suggested that the little syringe might
become a far more potent agent than the powders. Therefore he
induced the physician to give him an order for the instrument, and
to explain more fully the methods of its use, saying that attacks
of neuralgia were generally rather obstinate in his case, and that
he had neither the time nor the means to seek his services very
often.
The physician's few words of warning made but slight impression
upon the infatuated man at the time. Mr. Jocelyn remembered only
that he had an intolerable pain in his head and a heavy weight upon
his heart. Many a time during the long civil war he had smilingly
led charges wherein the chances of death were greater than those
of life, but neither then nor since had he ever displayed any great
aptitude for quiet endurance and self-control. Now every day was
precious, and he felt he could not give himself up to pain and
patient waiting until the disease could be conquered in a slow,
legitimate way, when by a wound no more than a pin-prick he could
obtain courage, happiness, and prospects illimitable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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