Page:Narrative of an Official Visit to Guatemala.djvu/119

CH. VII.] open door-way: I was sitting in the window seat next to it, and, finding they were undressing to go to bed, removed from it. As we were to set off early in the morning, I could have wished to have retired also to the vacant couch in the apartment which had been prepared for my reception; but I dreaded to pass the night in the room with the poor lad, whose bursts of agony now broke, with periodical uniformity of length and tone, on the stillness which prevailed. The reiterated voice of distress is afflicting, at all times, but most so when it is out of our power to relieve the cause of the affliction: we then become identified with the afflicted, and must leave the rest to patience and endurance. The sympathy, however, with which we witness the miseries of others is, perhaps, not unfrequently mixed with the certain, though secret, satisfaction of our own exemption from them. Having at length retired to rest, I was endeavouring to amuse my mind with some such reflection, when I heard a