216 
BIBBS IN A VILLAGE. 
and scarcely hurt him — as we know from our own 
experience; and when overcome, if death be not 
practically instantaneous, as in the case of a small 
bird seized by a cat, the disabling grip or blow is 
itself a kind of anodyne, producing insensibility to 
pain. This, too, is matter of human experience. 
To say nothing of those who fall in battle, men 
have often been struck down and fearfully lacerated 
by lions, tigers, jaguars, and other savage beasts ; 
and, after having been rescued by their companions, 
have recounted this strange thing. Even when 
there was no loss of consciousness, when they saw 
and knew that the animal was rending their flesh, 
they seemed not to feel it, and were, at the time, 
indifierent to the fate that had overtaken them. 
It is the same in death from cold. The strong, 
well-nourished man, overtaken by a snow-storm on 
some pathless, uninhabited waste, may experience 
some exceedingly bitter moments, or even hours, 
before he gives up the struggle. The physical pain 
is simply nothing ; the whole bitterness is in the 
thought that he must die. The horror at the 
thought of annihilation, the remembrance of all 
the happiness he is now about to lose, of dear 
friends, of those whose lives will be dimmed with 
grief for his loss, of all his cherished dreams of the 
future, — the sting of all this is so sharp that, com- 
pared with it, the creeping coldness in his blood 
