Ever since that time I have wondered whether mankind hath any bodily
ills which are not dependent upon the mind for their existence, and
are so curable by some sore stress of it. For verily, though my
wounds were not healed, and though I had not left my bed for a long
time, and my seat was both rough and hard, and my feet were rudely
pinioned between the boards, and the sun was blistering with that
damp blister which frets the soul as well as the flesh, I seemed to
sense nothing, except the shame and disgrace of my estate. As for my
bodily ailments, they might have been cured, for aught I knew of
them. To this time, when I lay me down to sleep after a harder day's
work than ordinary, I can see and hear the jeers of that rude crowd
around the stocks. Truly, after all, a man's vanity is his point of
vantage, and I wonder greatly if that be not the true meaning of the
vulnerable spot in Achilles's heel. Some slight dignity, though I
had not so understood it, I had maintained in the midst of my
misfortunes. To be a convict of one's free will, to protect the maid
of one's love from grief, was one thing, but to sit in the stocks,
exposed to the jibes of a common crowd, was another. And more than
aught else, I felt the sting of the comedy in it. To sit there with
my two feet straight out, soles to the people, through those rude
holes in the boards, and all at liberty to gaze and laugh at me, was
infinitely worse than to welter in my blood upon the scaffold. How
many times, as I sat there, it came to me that if it had been the
scaffold, Mary Cavendish could at least have held my memory in some
respect; as it was, she could but laugh. Full easy it may be for any
man with the courage of a man to figure in tragedy, but try him in
comedy, if you would prove his mettle.
Shortly after I arrived there in the New Field, which was a wide,
open space, the sports began, and I saw them all as in a dream, or
worse than a dream, a nightmare. First came Parson Downs, whispering
to me that as long as he could do me no good, and was in sore need
of money, and, moreover, since he would by so doing divert somewhat
the public attention from me, he would enter the race which was
shortly to come off for a prize of five pounds.