The Last Man


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controversy. It was not so with me; and the question of rank and right  
dwindled to insignificance in my eyes, when I pictured the scene of  
suffering Athens. I heard of the death of only sons; of wives and husbands  
most devoted; of the rending of ties twisted with the heart's fibres, of  
friend losing friend, and young mothers mourning for their first born; and  
these moving incidents were grouped and painted in my mind by the knowledge  
of the persons, by my esteem and affection for the sufferers. It was the  
admirers, friends, fellow soldiers of Raymond, families that had welcomed  
Perdita to Greece, and lamented with her the loss of her lord, that were  
swept away, and went to dwell with them in the undistinguishing tomb.  
The plague at Athens had been preceded and caused by the contagion from the  
East; and the scene of havoc and death continued to be acted there, on a  
scale of fearful magnitude. A hope that the visitation of the present year  
would prove the last, kept up the spirits of the merchants connected with  
these countries; but the inhabitants were driven to despair, or to a  
resignation which, arising from fanaticism, assumed the same dark hue.  
America had also received the taint; and, were it yellow fever or plague,  
the epidemic was gifted with a virulence before unfelt. The devastation was  
not confined to the towns, but spread throughout the country; the hunter  
died in the woods, the peasant in the corn-fields, and the fisher on his  
native waters.  
A strange story was brought to us from the East, to which little credit  
would have been given, had not the fact been attested by a multitude of  
witnesses, in various parts of the world. On the twenty-first of June, it  
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