I carried about with me an unceasing
curse; an imaginary barrier separated me from my fellow men. I felt like
an executioner, from whose bloody touch men shrink, not so much from
loathing of the _man_, who is but the instrument of death, as from horror
at the image of that death itself--death, sudden, appalling, and
inevitable. Like him, I brought the presence of death too vividly before
them; like him, I was connected with the infliction of a doom I had no
power to avert. Men withheld from me their affection, refused me their
sympathy, as if I were not like themselves. My very mortality seemed less
obvious to their imaginations when contrasted with the hundreds for whom
my hand prepared the last narrow dwelling-house, which was to shroud for
ever their altered faces from sorrowful eyes. Where _I_ came, _there_ came
heaviness of heart, mournfulness, and weeping. Laughter was hushed at my
approach; conversation ceased; darkness and silence fell around my
steps--the darkness and the silence of _death_. Gradually I became awake
to my situation. I no longer attempted to hold free converse with my
fellow men. I suffered the gloom of their hearts to overshadow mine. My
step crept slowly and stealthily into their dwellings; my voice lowered
itself to sadness and monotony; I pressed no hand in token of
companionship; no hand pressed mine, except when wrung with agony, some
wretch, whose burden was more than he could bear restrained me for a few
moments of maddened and convulsive grief, from putting the last finishing
stroke to my work, and held me back to gaze yet again on features which I
was about to cover from his sight.
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