CHAPTER XL
When Miss Prissy left the room the Doctor sat down by the table, and covered his face with his hands. He had a large, passionate, determined nature; and he had just come to one of those cruel crises in life, in the which it is apt to seem to us that the whole force of our being—all that we can hope, or wish, or feel—has been suffered to gather itself into one great wave, only to break upon some cold rock of inevitable fate, and go back moaning into emptiness.
In such hours men and women have cursed God and life, and thrown violently down and trampled under their feet what yet was left of life’s blessings in the fierce bitterness of despair. This or nothing! the soul shrieks in her frenzy.
At just such points as these men have plunged into intemperance and wild excess; they ha
