Vision

The sun cut sharply across one corner of the room. The young man on the cot gazed at the brightness for a moment, then turned and faced the wall. He had been in the Edinburgh Infirmary nearly two years now, while Dr. Lister tried desperately to save his remaining foot. He had been subjected to so many operations he had lost count, twenty at least, in the last twenty months! But he was not beaten yet. He turned and faced the sun again, and smiled. Words rang through his mind, sang through his mind: “In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud.” The man on the cot was William Ernest Henley. Few in this world are called upon to endure all he had in his brief twenty-five years. He had suffered since childhood from an agonizing tubercular infection of the bones, for which the usual victorian remedy was amputation. One foot had already been removed, and the other was threatened. It was in the hope of avoiding a second amputation that he had submitted to this lo...