Surely it were enough for Mr. Judson to be shut up in the hot, stifling stench of a place like this without having his ankles and legs weighted with five pairs of irons, the scars from which he wore to his dying day. He could say with the Apostle Paul, “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” In each pair of fetters the two iron rings were connected by a chain so short that the heel of one foot could hardly be advanced to the toe of the other; and this task could be accomplished only by “shuffling a few inches at a time.” The five pairs of irons weighed about fourteen pounds, and when they were removed after being long worn, there was a strained sensation, the equilibrium of the body seemingly destroyed, so that the head was too heavy for the feet. Then at nightfall, lest the prisoners should escape, they were _strung_ (to use Dr. Price’s graphic if not elegant expression) on a bamboo pole.
“When night came on,” writes one of Mr. Judson’s fellow-prisoners, “the ‘Father’ of the establishment, entering, stalked toward our corner. The meaning of the bamboo now became apparent. It was passed between the legs of each individual, and when it had threaded our number, seven in all, a man at each end hoisted it up by the blocks to a height which allowed our shoulders to rest on the ground, while our feet depended from the iron rings of the fetters. The adjustment of the height was left to the judgment of our kind-hearted parent, who stood by to see that it was not high enough to endanger life, nor low enough to exempt from pain.... In the morning, our considerate parent made his appearance, and, with his customary grin, lowered down the bamboo to within a foot of the floor, to the great relief of our benumbed limbs, in which the blood slowly began again to circulate.”
When Mr. Judson was subjected to these indignities and tortures, he was in the very prime of life—thirty-six years old. He had come to that age when a good physical constitution is thoroughly seasoned and well qualified to endure hardship.
He had always taken the best care of his health consistent with the performance of his multiform duties. Even before leaving America, he had adopted the following rules: First, frequently to inhale large quantities of air, so as to expand the lungs to the uttermost; secondly, daily to sponge the whole body in cold water; and thirdly, and above all, to take systematic exercise in walking.
Again, he had that tough, wiry physique which endures unexpectedly even during prolonged crises. All this was in his favor. But, on the other hand, he was a student, unused to suffering hardship. His naturally vigorous constitution had been somewhat enfeebled by ten years of close application to study in a tropical climate, and of late years had been completely shattered by repeated blows of fever and ague. He was reared in the cold, bracing air of New England, and during the tedious hours of imprisonment, how often must his memory have projected the sufferings of the Oriental jail against the background of the cool, green hillsides of his childhood. For
... “this is truth the poet sings, That a sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.”
And his was an active, methodical nature, to which the enforced idleness of twenty-one months must have brought the keenest torture. There was his Burman Bible unfinished, and ten years of work in Rangoon going to pieces in his absence. He longed to be preaching the Gospel. Now that he had at last completely mastered the native tongue, he was filled with Jeremiah’s consuming zeal. “His word was in mine heart, as a burning fire shut up in my bones.”
Endowed with a nervous temperament, his nature was exceedingly sensitive to discomfort. One of his fellow-prisoners says: “His painful sensitiveness to anything gross or uncleanly, amounting almost to folly, was an unfortunate virtue to possess, and made him live a life of constant martyrdom.” Of his personal habits, Mrs. E. C. Judson says: