THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING. 



Is not insanity counted a terrible thing with us? 

 Was not his insanity also a tragedy? He might have 

 spent life happily among the woods, sniffing the leaves 

 for the trail; instead, he wandered back to the forest, 

 instinctively, as to his home, his intelligence lost, crazed 

 by the pain which his masters, in their cruelty, had 

 brought upon him. Equally with us, I say unfulfilled 

 life for any creature is a tragedy, and I do not know 

 of the remedy in this world. 



The most heartless crime that I think a man can 

 perpetrate upon a fellow mortal is to feed a dog upon 

 ground glass. This causes a most horrible and painful 

 and lingering death. We once had a fine, intelligent 

 shepherd dog who was killed by that method, having 

 in some way incurred the hatred of some lover of 

 wickedness. He was in the woods two days before we 

 learned where he was, and there I found him, half 

 dead, and with his hind legs paralyzed. He still recog- 

 nized me, but he was dying. His cries, as he lay 

 stretched upon the leaves, still linger in my ears. Now 

 how did pain serve to him as a ministry of discipline? 

 Was it not a supremely heartless tragedy? 



I am amused at the sheep ("the silly sheep"), and 

 at their lambs, as they go rollicking about. Yet even 

 sheep have their tragedies; and I suppose the culmi- 

 nating tragedy of their lives, to them, is when they are 

 driven away down the dusty turnpike to the slaughter 

 pen by the very shepherd who has fed and cared for 

 them. One instance especially I shall always remember. 

 It was lambing time, and we had been with the ewes. 

 One of them lay in evident misery, and we went to her. 

 She had suffered great pain, and had hoped to nourish 



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