In other words, Giles was now a soap boiler, in a small
way. He had come to be but the fragment of a human being, a part of
one foot having been chopped off by an axe, and an entire hand torn
away by the devilish grip of a steam engine. Yet, though the corporeal
hand was gone, a spiritual member remained; for, stretching forth the
stump, Giles steadfastly averred that he felt an invisible thumb and
fingers with as vivid a sensation as before the real ones were
amputated. A maimed and miserable wretch he was; but one,
nevertheless, whom the world could not trample on, and had no right to
scorn, either in this or any previous stage of his misfortunes, since
he had still kept up the courage and spirit of a man, asked nothing in
charity, and with his one hand--and that the left one--fought a stern
battle against want and hostile circumstances.
Among the throng, too, came another personage, who, with certain
points of similarity to Lawyer Giles, had many more of difference. It
was the village doctor; a man of some fifty years, whom, at an earlier
period of his life, we introduced as paying a professional visit to
Ethan Brand during the latter's supposed insanity. He was now a
purple-visaged, rude, and brutal, yet half-gentlemanly figure, with
something wild, ruined, and desperate in his talk, and in all the
details of his gesture and manners. Brandy possessed this man like an
evil spirit, and made him as surly and savage as a wild beast, and as
miserable as a lost soul; but there was supposed to be in him such
wonderful skill, such native gifts of healing, beyond any which
medical science could impart, that society caught hold of him, and
would not let him sink out of its reach.
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